eri SarisT iJrpifjf- 




^LuibLia/n QJriaJLejfi caw 

from tfie (A : rocj/iott / /utuili/to rtorv in the 
(Imak e&n eare o/l/Lejn or Lai ya Leery at c)tra t/r rd-on-^ He wtv, 



A LIFE 



OF 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



BY 



SIDNEY LEE 



WITH PORTRAITS AND FACSIMILES 



THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 

LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd. 
1898 

All rights reserved 



.Lf„ 



18923 



Copyright, 1898, 
Bv THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 







Norfoootj !flircgs 

J. S. Cushing & Co. - Berwick & Smith 
Norwood Mass. U.S.A. 



wao^ 



/** c7 



PREFACE 



This work is based on the article on Shakespeare 
which I contributed last year to the fifty-first volume 
of the ' Dictionary of National Biography.' But the 
changes and additions which the article has under- 
gone during my revision of it for separate publication 
are so numerous as to give the book a title to be 
regarded as an independent venture. In its general 
aims, however, the present life of Shakespeare en- 
deavours loyally to adhere to the principles that are 
inherent in the scheme of the ' Dictionary of National 
Biography.' I have endeavoured to set before my 
readers a plain and practical narrative of the great 
dramatist's personal history as concisely as the needs 
of clearness and completeness would permit. I have 
sought to provide students of Shakespeare with a full 
record of the duly attested facts and dates of their 
master's career. I have avoided merely aesthetic criti- 
cism. My estimates of the value of Shakespeare's 
plays and poems are intended solely to fulfil the 
obligation that lies on the biographer of indicating 



VI WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

succinctly the character of the successive labours, 
which were woven into the texture of his hero's life. 
^Esthetic studies of Shakespeare abound, and to in- 
crease their number is a work of supererogation. But 
Shakespearean literature, as far as it is known to me, 
still lacks a book that shall supply within a brief 
compass an exhaustive and well-arranged statement 
of the facts of Shakespeare's career, achievement, and 
reputation, that shall reduce conjecture to the smallest 
dimensions consistent with coherence, and shall give 
verifiable references to all the original sources of 
information. After studying Elizabethan literature, 
history, and bibliography for more than eighteen 
years, I believed that I might, without exposing my- 
self to a charge of presumption, attempt something in 
the way of filling this gap, and that I might be able 
to supply, at least tentatively, a guide-book to Shake- 
speare's life and work that should be, within its limits, 
complete and trustworthy. How far my belief was 
justified the readers of this volume will decide. 

I cannot promise my readers any startling revela- 
tions. But my researches have enabled me to remove 
some ambiguities which puzzled my predecessors, 
and to throw light on one or two topics that have 
hitherto obscured the course of Shakespeare's career. 
Particulars that have not been before incorporated 
in Shakespeare's biography will be found in my 
treatment of the following subjects : the conditions 
under which ' Love's Labour's Lost ' and the ' Mer- 



PREFACE vii 

chant of Venice ' were written ; the references in 
Shakespeare's plays to his native town and county ; 
his father's applications to the Heralds' College for 
coat-armour ; his relations with Ben Jonson and the 
boy actors in 1601 ; the favour extended to his work 
by James I and his Court ; the circumstances which 
led to the publication of the First Folio, and the his- 
tory of the dramatist's portraits. I have somewhat 
expanded the notices of Shakespeare's financial affairs 
which have already appeared in the article in the 
1 Dictionary of National Biography,' and a few new 
facts will be found in my revised estimate of the 
poet's pecuniary position. 

In my treatment of the sonnets I have pursued 
what I believe to be an original line of investigation. 
The strictly autobiographical interpretation that crit- 
ics have of late placed on these poems compelled 
me, as Shakespeare's biographer, to submit them to 
a very narrow scrutiny. My conclusion is adverse to 
the claim of the sonnets to rank as autobiographical 
documents, but I have felt bound, out of respect to 
writers from whose views I dissent, to give in detail 
the evidence on which I base my judgment. Mat- 
thew Arnold sagaciously laid down the maxim that 
' the criticism which alone can much help us for the 
future is a criticism which regards Europe as being 
for intellectual and artistic 1 purposes one great con- 

1 Arnold wrote ' spiritual,' but the change of epithet is needful to 
render the dictum thoroughly pertinent to the topic under consideration. 



Vlll WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

federation, bound to a joint action and working to a 
common result.' It is criticism inspired by this lib- 
eralising principle that is especially applicable to the 
vast sonnet-literature which was produced by Shake- 
speare and his contemporaries. It is criticism of the 
type that Arnold recommended that can alone lead 
to any accurate and profitable conclusion respect- 
ing the intention of the vast sonnet-literature of the 
Elizabethan era. In accordance with Arnold's sug- 
gestion, I have studied Shakespeare's sonnets com- 
paratively with those in vogue in England, France, 
and Italy at the time he wrote. I have endeavoured 
to learn the view that was taken of such literary 
endeavours by contemporary critics and readers 
throughout Europe. My researches have covered a 
very small portion of the wide field. But I have gone 
far enough, I think, to justify the conviction that 
Shakespeare's collection of sonnets has no reasonable 
title to be regarded as a personal or autobiographical 
narrative. 

In the Appendix (Sections in. and iv.) I have 
supplied a memoir of Shakespeare's patron, the Earl 
of Southampton, and an account of the Earl's rela- 
tions with the contemporary world of letters. Apart 
from Southampton's association with the sonnets, he 
promoted Shakespeare's welfare at an early stage of 
the dramatist's career, and I can quote the authority 
of Malone, who appended a sketch of Southamp- 
ton's history to his biography of Shakespeare (in the 



PREFACE IX 

'Variorum' edition of 1821), for treating a know- 
ledge of Southampton's life as essential to a full 
knowledge of Shakespeare's. I have also printed in 
the Appendix a detailed statement of the precise cir- 
cumstances under which Shakespeare's sonnets were 
published by Thomas Thorpe in 1609 (Section v.), 
and a review of the facts that seem to me to confute 
the popular theory that Shakespeare was a friend and 
protege of William Herbert, third Earl of Pembroke, 
who has been put-forward quite unwarrantably as the 
hero of the sonnets (Sections vi., vil, vin.). 1 I have 
also included in the Appendix (Sections ix. and x.) 
a survey of the voluminous sonnet-literature of the 
Elizabethan poets between 1 591 and 1597, with which 
Shakespeare's sonnetteering efforts were very closely 
allied, as well as a bibliographical note on a corre- 
sponding feature of French and Italian literature 
between 1550 and 1600. 

Since the publication of the article on Shake- 
speare in the ' Dictionary of National Biography,' I 
have received from correspondents many criticisms 
and suggestions which have enabled me to correct 
some errors. But a few of my correspondents have 
exhibited so ingenuous a faith in those forged docu- 

1 1 have already published portions of the papers on Shakespeare's 
relations with the Earls of Pembroke and Southampton in the Fort* 
nightly Review (for February of this year) and in the Cornhill Magazine 
(for April of this year), and I have to thank the proprietors of those 
periodicals for permission to reproduce my material in this volume. 



X WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ments relating to Shakespeare and forged references 
to his works, which were promulgated chiefly by- 
John Payne Collier more than half a century ago, 
that I have attached a list of the misleading records 
to my chapter on 'The Sources of Biographical 
Information ' in the Appendix (Section i.). I be- 
lieve the list to be fuller than any to be met with 
elsewhere. 

The six illustrations which appear in this volume 
have been chosen on grounds of practical utility 
rather than of artistic merit. My reasons for selecting 
as the frontispiece the newly discovered ' Droeshout ' 
painting of Shakespeare (now in the Shakespeare 
Memorial Gallery at Stratford-on-Avon) can be gath- 
ered from the history of the painting and of its dis- 
covery which I give on pages 288-90. I have to 
thank Mr. Edgar Flower and the other members of 
the Council of the Shakespeare Memorial at Stratford 
for permission to reproduce the picture. The por- 
trait of Southampton in early life is now at Welbeck 
Abbey, and the Duke of Portland not only per- 
mitted the portrait to be engraved for this volume, 
but lent me the negative from which the plate has 
been prepared. The Committee of the Garrick 
Club gave permission to photograph the interesting 
bust of Shakespeare in their possession, 1 but, owing 
to the fact that it is moulded in black terra-cotta, 
no satisfactory negative could be obtained; the 

1 For an account of its history see p. 295. 



PREFACE xi 

engraving I have used is from a photograph of a 
white plaster cast of the original bust, now in the 
Memorial Gallery at Stratford. The five autographs 
of Shakespeare's signature — all that exist of un- 
questioned authenticity — appear in the three remain- 
ing plates. The three signatures on the will have 
been photographed from the original document at 
Somerset House, by permission of Sir Francis Jeune, 
President of the Probate Court; the autograph on 
the deed of purchase by Shakespeare in 1613 of 
the house in Blackfriars has been photographed 
from the original document in the Guildhall Library, 
by permission of the Library Committee of the City 
of London; and the autograph on the deed of 
mortgage relating to the same property, also dated 
in 161 3, has been photographed from the original 
document in the British Museum, by permission of 
the Trustees. Shakespeare's coat-of-arms and motto, 
which are stamped on the cover of this volume, are 
copied from the trickings in the margin of the draft- 
grants of arms now in the Heralds' College. 

The Baroness Burdett-Coutts has kindly given me 
ample opportunities of examining the two peculiarly 
interesting and valuable copies of the First Folio 1 in 
her possession. Mr. Richard Savage, of Stratford-on- 
Avon, the Secretary of the Birthplace Trustees, and 
Mr. W. Salt Brassington, the Librarian of the Shake- 
speare Memorial at Stratford, have courteously re- 

1 See pp. 309, 311. 



Xll WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

plied to the many inquiries that I have addressed to 
them verbally or by letter. Mr. Lionel Cust, the 
Director of the National Portrait Gallery, has helped 
me to estimate the authenticity of Shakespeare's 
portraits. I have also benefited, while the work has 
been passing through the press, by the valuable sug- 
gestions of my friends the Rev. H. C. Beeching and 
Mr. W. J. Craig, and I have to thank Mr. Thomas 
Seccombe for the zealous aid he has rendered me 
while correcting the final proofs. 

October 12, 1898. 



CONTENTS 



PARENTAGE AND BIRTH 



Distribution of the name 

of Shakespeare . . i 
The poet's ancestry . . 2 
The poet's father . . 4 
His settlement at Strat- 
ford .... 5 



The poet's mother . . 6 
1564, April. The poet's birth 

and baptism ... 8 

Alleged birthplace . . 8 



II 



CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 



IS7I-7. 

1575 
1577 



The father in municipal 




1582, 


Dec. The poet's marriage 


18 


office .... 


10 




Richard Hathaway of 




Brothers and sisters . 


11 




Shottery 


19 


The father's financial dif- 






Anne Hathaway 


19 


ficulties .... 


12 




Anne Hathaway's cot- 




t Shakespeare's education 


13 




tage .... 


19 


His classical equipment . 


15 




The bond against imped- 




Shakespeare's knowledge 






iments .... 


20 


of the Bible . 


16 


15S3. 


May. Birth of the poet's 




Queen Elizabeth at Ken- 






daughter Susanna 


22 


ilworth .... 


17 




Formal betrothal proba- 




Withdrawal from school . 


18 




bly dispensed with 


23 



XIV 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



III 



THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD 



Early married life . . 25 
Poaching in Charlecote . 27 
Unwarranted doubts of 
the tradition . . .28 



1585 



Justice Shallow 

The flight from Stratford , 



IV 



ON THE LONDON STAGE 



1586 



The Journey to London . 


3 1 


The London theatres 


36 


Richard Field, Shake- 




Place of residence in Lon- 




speare's townsman 


32 


don .... 


38 


Theatrical employment . 


32 


Actors' provincial tours . 


39 


A playhouse servitor 


33 


Shakespeare's alleged 




The acting companies 


34 


travels .... 


40 


The Lord Chamberlain's 




In Scotland 


4 1 


company 


35 


In Italy .... 


42 


Shakespeare a member of 




Shakespeare's roles . 


43 


the Lord Chamberlain's 




His alleged scorn of an 




company 


36 


actor's calling 


45 



V 



EARLY DRAMATIC WORK 



The period of Shake- 
speare's dramatic work, 
1591-1611 . . .46 
His borrowed plots . . 47 
The revision of plays . 47 
Chronology of the plays . 48 
Metrical tests . . .49 
1591 Love's Labour s Lost . 50 

159 1 Two Gentlemen of Verona 52 

1592 Comedy of Errors . . 53 
1592 Romeo and Juliet . . 55 
1592, March. Henry VI . .56 
1592, Sept. Greene's attack on 

Shakespeare . . -57 
Chettle's apology . . 58 
Divided authorship of 

Henry VI . .59 

Shakespeare's coadjutors 60 
Shakespeare's assimilative 

power . . . .61 
Lyly's influence in comedy 61 



1593 
1593 



1593 



Marlowe's influence in 
tragedy .... 

Richard III . 

Richard II 

Shakespeare's acknow- 
ledgments to Marlowe . 

Titus Andronicus 
1594, August. The Merchant of 
Venice .... 

Shylock and Roderigo 
Lopez .... 
1594 King John 
1594, Dec. 28. Comedy of Er- 
rors in Gray's Inn Hall 

Early plays doubtfully as- 
signed to Shakespeare . 

Arden of Feversham 
(1592) .... 

Edward III . 

Mucedorus 

Faire Em (1592) 



CONTENTS 



XV 



VI 



THE FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC 



1593, April. Publication of Ve- 

nus and Adonis . . 74 

1594, May. Publication of Lu- 

crece . . . .76 



PAGE 

Enthusiastic reception of 

the poems . . .78 
Shakespeare and Spenser 79 
Patrons at Court . .81 



VII 



THE SONNETS A-ND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 



The vogue of the Eliza- 
bethan sonnet . . 83 
Shakespeare's first experi- 
ments . . . .84 
1594 Majority of Shakespeare's 

sonnets composed . 85 

Their literary value . . 87 
Circulation in manuscript 88 
Their piratical publication 

in 1609 . . . .89 
A Lover's Complaint 91 

Thomas Thorpe and ' Mr. 

W. H.' . . . . 91 
The form of Shakespeare's 

sonnets . . . .95 

Their want of continuity . 96 

The two ' groups ' .96 

Main topics of the first 

' group ' ... 98 



Main topics of the second 
'group' ... 99 

The order of the sonnets 
in the edition of 1640 . 100 

Lack of genuine senti- 
ment in Elizabethan 
sonnets .... 100 

Their dependence on 
French and Italian 
models . . . .101 

Sonnetteers' admissions of 
insincerity . . , 105 

Contemporary censure of 
sonnetteers' false senti- 
ment .... 106 

Shakespeare's scornful al- 
lusions to sonnets in his 
plays .... 108 



VIII 



THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS 



Slender autobiographi- 
cal element in Shake- 
speare's sonnets . 
The imitative element 
Shakespeare's claims of 
immortality for his son- 
nets a borrowed con- 
ceit .... 



"3 



Conceits in sonnets ad- 
dressed to a woman . 117 

The praise of ' blackness ' 118 

The sonnets of vitupera- 
tion .... 120 

Gabriel Harvey's Amo- 
rous Odious sonnet . 121 

Jodelle's Contr' Amours . 122 



XVI 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



IX 



THE PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 



Biographic fact in the 

' dedicatory ' sonnets . 
The Earl of Southampton 

the poet's sole patron . 
Rivals in Southampton's 

favour . 
Shakespeare's fear of an 

other poet ; 
Barnabe Barnes probably 

the chief rival 
Other theories as to the 

chief rival's identity 
Sonnets of friendship . 136 
Extravagances of literary 

compliment . . . 138 



126 



• 13° 



132 



133 
134 



139 



142 

143 



Patrons habitually ad- 
dressed in affectionate 
terms .... 

Direct references to 
Southampton in the 
sonnets of friendship . 

His youthfulness 

The evidence of portraits 144 

Sonnet cvii. the last of the 
series .... 147 

Allusions to Queen Eliza- 
beth's death . . . 147 

Allusion to Southamp- 
ton's release from 
prison . . . . 149 



X 



THE SUPPOSED STORY OF INTRIGUE IN THE SONNETS 



Sonnets of melancholy 
and self-reproach . .151 

The youth's relations with 
the poet's mistress . 153 



Willoble his Aviso. 

(1594) • ■ • -155 
Summary of conclusions 
respecting the sonnets . 158 



XI 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 



1594-5 Midsummer Night' s 






Dream .... 161 




1595 


All's Well that Ends 
Well . . . .162 




1595 


The Taming of the Shrew 163 
Stratford allusions in the 
Induction . . . 164 






Wincot . . . .165 


1598 


1597- 


Henry IV . . . .167 
Falstaff" . . . .169 




1597 


The Merry Wives of 


1599 




Windsor , . .171 


1601 


1598 


Henry V . . . . 173 





Essex and the rebellion of 

1601 .... 174 
Shakespeare's popularity 

and influence . . 176 
Shakespeare's friendship 

with Ben Jonson . . 176 
The Mermaid meetings . 177 
Meres's eulogy . . . 178 
Value of his name to pub- 
lishers .... 179 
The Passionate Pilgrim . 182 
The Phoenix and the 
Turtle . ..:..-. .183 



CONTENTS 



XV11 



XII 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 



Shakespeare's practical 

temperament. . . 185 

His father's difficulties . 186 

His wife's debt . . . 187 

1596-9 The coat of arms . . 188 

1597, May 4. The purchase of 

New Place . . . 193 
1598 Fellow-townsmen appeal 

to Shakespeare for aid 195 
Shakespeare's financial 
position before 1599 * . 196 



PAGE 

Shakespeare's financial 

position after 1599 . 200 
His later income . . 202 
Incomes of fellow-actors . 203 
1601-1610 Shakespeare's for- 
mation of his estate at 
Stratford . . . 204 
1605 The Stratford tithes . . 205 
1600-1609 Recovery of small 

debts .... 206 



XIII 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 



1599 
1599 
1600 
1601 



1601 



Literary work in 1599 . 207 
Much Ado about Nothing 208 
As You Like It . . . 209 
Twelfth Night . . . 209 
Julius Ccesar . . . 211 
The strife between adult 

actors and boy actors . 213 
Shakespeare's references 

to the struggle . . 216 
Ben Jonson's Poetaster . 217 
Shakespeare's alleged par- 
tisanship in the theatri- 
cal warfare . . . 219 



1602 Hamlet .... 221 
The problem of its publi- 
cation .... 222 

The First Quarto, 1603 . 222 
The Second Quarto, 1604 223 
The Folio version, 1623 . 223 
Popularity of Hamlet . 224 

1603 Troilus and Cressida . 223 
Treatment of the theme . 227 

1603, March 26. Queen Eliza- 
beth's death . . . 229 
James I's patronage . 230 



XIV 



THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 



1604, 
1604, 


Nov. Othello . 

Dec. Measure for Me as 


235 


1606 
1607 


ure 
Macbeth . 
King Lear 


237 

239 

. 241 



1608 Timon of Athe?is 

1608 Pericles . 

1608 Antony and Cleopatra 

1609 Cor io I anus 



242 
243 
245 
247 



XV111 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



XV 

THE LATEST PLAYS 



The placid temper of the 
latest plays . . . 248 

1 6 10 Cymbeline .... 249 

161 1 A Winter 's Tale . .251 
16 1 1 The Tempest . . . 252 

Fanciful interpretations of 

The Te?npest . . .256 
Unfinished plays . . 258 



The lost play of Car- 
denio .... 258 

The Two Noble Kins- 
men .... 259 

Henry VIII . . .261 

The burning of the Globe 
Theatre .... 262 



XVI 
THE CLOSE OF LIFE 



Plays at Court in 1613 . 264 
Actor-friends . . . 264 
161 1 Final settlement at Strat- 
ford .... 266 
Domestic affairs . . 266 

1613, March. Purchase of a 

house in Blackfriars . 267 

1614, Oct. Attempt to enclose 

the Stratford common 
fields .... 269 
1616, April 23. Shakespeare's 

death .... 272 



1616, April 25. Shakespeare's 

burial .... 272 
The will .... 273 
Shakespeare's bequest to 

his wife .... 273 
Shakespeare's heiress . 275 
Legacies to friends . . 276 
The tomb in Stratford 

Church .... 276 
Shakespeare's personal 

character . . . 277 



XVII 

SURVIVORS AND DESCENDANTS 



Mrs. Judith Quiney (1585- 
1662) .... 280 

Mrs. Susannah Hall 
(1583-1649) . . .281 



The last descendant . . 282 
Shakespeare's brothers, 
Edmund, Richard, and 
Gilbert . . . .283 



XVIII 
AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 
poet's 



the 



Spelling of 

name .... 284 
Autograph signatures . 284 
Shakespeare's portraits . 286 
The Stratford bust . . 286 
The ' Stratford portrait ' . 287 
Droeshout's engraving . 287 
The ' Droeshout ' paint- 
ing 288 

Later portraits . . . 291 



The Chandos portrait . 292 

The ' Jansen' portrait . 294 

The ' Felton ' portrait . 294 

The 'Soest' portrait. . 294 

Miniatures . . . 295 

The Garrick Club bust . 295 

Alleged death-mask . . 296 

Memorials in sculpture . 297 

Memorials at Stratford . 297 



CONTENTS 



XIX 



XIX 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 






PAGE 




PAGE 


Quartos of the poems in 




Alexander Pope (1688- 




the poet's lifetime . 


299 


1744) . 


315 


Posthumous quartos oi 




Lewis Theobald (1688- 




the poems 


300 


1744) . 


317 


The ' Poems ' of 1640 


300 


Sir Thomas Hanmei 




Quartos of the plays in the 




(1677-1746) . 


317 


poet's lifetime 


300 


Bishop Warburton (1698- 




Posthumous quartos of the 




1779) . 


318 


plays .... 


300 


Dr. Johnson (1709-1783) 


3 X 9 


1623 The First Folio 


303 


Edward Capell (1713- 




The publishing syndi- 




1781) . . 


319 


cate . . . " . 


303 


George Steevens (1736- 




The prefatory matter 


306 


1800) 


320 


The value of the text 


3°7 


Edmund Malone (1741- 




The order of the plays 


307 


1812) . 


322 


The typography 


308 


Variorum editions . 


322 


Unique copies . 


308 


Nineteenth-century edi 




The Sheldon copy . 


3°9 


tors. 


3 2 3 


Estimated number of ex- 




Alexander Dyce (1798- 




tant copies 


310 


1C69) 


323 


Reprints of the First 




Howard Staunton (1810- 




Folio .... 


311 


1874) . . 


324 


1632 The Second Folio . 


312 


Nikolaus Delius (1813- 




1663-4 The Third Folio . 


312 


1888) . 


3 2 4 


1685 The Fourth Folio . 


313 


The Cambridge edition 




Eighteenth-century edi- 




(1863-1866) . 


324 


tors .... 


313 


Other nineteenth-centur> 




Nicholas Rowe (1674- 




editions . 


324 


1718) .... 


314 







XX 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 



Views of Shakespeare's 




The first appea 


contemporaries 


326 


actresses in 


Ben Jonson's tribute 


327 


spearean parts 


English opinion between 




David Garrick 


1660 and 1702 


329 


1779) • 


Dryden's view . 


33o 


John Philip 


Restoration adaptations . 


331 


(1757-1823) . 


English opinion from 1702 




Mrs. Sarah 


onwards 


332 


(1755-1831) . 


Stratford festivals 


334 


Edmund Kean 


Shakespeare on the Eng- 




1833) ■ • 


lish stage 


334 





Shake- 

(1717- 

Kemble 



Siddons 



(1787- 



334 
336 
337 
337 
338 



XX 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



William Charles Mac- 
ready (1793-1873) • 339 
Recent revivals . . . 339 
Shakespeare in English 

music and art . . 340 
Boydell's Shakespeare 

gallery . . . .341 
Shakespeare in America . 341 
Translations . . . 342 
Shakespeare in Germany . 342 
German translations . . 343 
Modern German critics . 345 
Shakespeare on the Ger- 
man stage . . .345 



Shakespeare in France 

Voltaire's strictures . 

French critics' gradua 
emancipation from Vol 
tairean influence . 

Shakespeare on the 
French stage . 

Shakespeare in Italy 

In Holland 

In Russia . 

In Poland. 

In Hungary 

In other countries . 



347 
348 



349 

350 
352 
352 
353 
353 
353 
354 



XXI 



General estimate 
Shakespeare's defects 



GENERAL 

• 355 
jfects . 355 


ESTIMATE 

Character of Shake- 
speare's achievement . 356 
Its universal recognition . 357 



APPENDIX 



THE SOURCES OF BIOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE 



Contemporary records 

abundant . . . 361 
First efforts in biography . 361 
Biographers of the nine- 
teenth century . . 362 
Stratford topography . 363 
Specialised studies in 

biography . . . 363 
Epitomes .... 364 
Aids to study of plots and 
text .... 364 



Concordances . . . 364 
Bibliographies . . . 365 
Critical studies . . . 365 
Shakespearean forgeries . 365 
John Jordan (1746-1809) 366 
The Ireland forgeries 

(1796) . . . .366 
List of forgeries promul- 
gated by Collier and 
others (1835-1849) . 367 



II 



THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY 



Its source .... 370 
Toby Matthew's letter of 

1621 . . . . 371 
Chief exponents of the 

theory .... 371 



Its vogue in America . 372 
Extent of the literature . 372 
Absurdity of the theory . 373 



APPENDIX] 



CONTENTS 



XXI 



III 



THE YOUTHFUL CAREER OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 



Shakespeare and South- 
ampton .... 374 

Southampton's parentage 374 
1573, Oct. 6. Southampton's 

birth . . . .375 

His education . . . 375 

Recognition of South- 
ampton's beauty in 
youth . . . .377 



His reluctance to marry . 378 
Intrigue with Elizabeth 



Vernon . 


379 


1598 Southampton's marriage 


379 


1601-3 Southampton's impris 




onment . 


380 


Later career 


380 


1624, Nov. 10. His death . 


38i 



IV 



THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON AS A LITERARY PATRON 



1593 



Southampton's collection 

of books . . . 382 

References in his letters 

to poems and plays . 382 
His love of the theatre . 383 
Poetic adulation . . 384 
Barnabe Barnes's sonnet . 384 



Tom Nash's addresses . 385 
1595 Gervase Markham's son- 
net 387 

1598 Florio's address . . 387 
The congratulations of the 

poets in 1603 . . . 387 
Elegies on Southampton . 389 



THE TRUE HISTORY OF THOMAS THORPE AND 'MR. W. H.' 



The publication of the 

'Sonnets' in 1609 . . 390 
The text of the dedica- 
tion .... 391 
Publishers' dedications . 392 
Thorpe's early life . . 393 
His ownership of the 
manuscript of Mar- 
lowe's Lucan . . . 393 
His dedicatory address 
to Edward Blount in 
1600 . . . .394 
Character of his business . 395 
Shakespeare's sufferings 

at publishers' hands . 396 
The use of initials in 



dedications of Eliza- 
bethan and Jacobean 
books .... 397 

Frequency of wishes for 
' happiness ' and ' eter- 
nity ' in dedicatory 
greetings . . . 398 

Five dedications by 
Thorpe . . . . 399 

' W. H.' signs dedica- 
tion of Southwell's 
' Poems ' . . . 400 

' W. H.' and Mr. William 
Hall . . . . 402 

The ' onlie begetter ' 
means ' only procurer ' . 403 



XX11 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



{APPENDIX 



VI 



MR. WILLIAM HERBERT 



Origin of the notion that 
' Mr. W. H.' stands for 
William Herbert . . 406 

The Earl of Pembroke 



known only as Lord 
Herbert in youth . . 407 
Thorpe's mode of address- 
ing the Earl of Pem- 
broke .... 408 



VII 



SHAKESPEARE AND THE EARL OF PEMBROKE 



Shakespeare with the act- 
ing company at Wilton 
in 1603 .... 

The dedication of the 
First Folio in 1623 

No suggestion in the 
sonnets of the youth's 



41 ] 



412 



identity with Pem- 
broke .... 413 
Aubrey's ignorance of 
any relation between 
Shakespeare and Pem- 
broke .... 414 



VIII 

THE 'WILL 1 SONNETS 



Elizabethan meanings of 

'will' .... 416 
Shakespeare's uses of the 

word .... 417 
Shakespeare's puns on the 

word .... 418 
Arbitrary and irregular 

use of italics by Eliza- 



bethan and 
printers 



Jacobean 



419 



The conceits of Sonnets 

cxxxv.-vi. interpreted . 420 
Sonnet cxxxv. . . . 421 
Sonnet cxxxvi. . . . 422 
Sonnet cxxxiv. . . . 425 
Sonnet cxliii. . . . 426 



IX 



THE VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET, I59I-I597 



1557 Wyatt's and Surrey's Son- 



1582 
i59i 



1592 



nets published 
Watson's Centurie 

Love 
Sidney's Astrophel 

Stella . 
Collected sonnets 

feigned love . 
Daniel's Delia . 



of 

and 

of 



427 
428 
428 



429 
43o 



Fame of Daniel's sonnets 431 

1592 Constable's Diana . . 431 

1593 Barnabe Barnes's sonnets 432 
1593 Watson's Tears of 

Fancie .... 433 
1593 Giles Fletcher's Licia . 433 

1593 Lodge's Phillis . . . 433 

1594 Drayton's Idea . . . 434 
1594 Percy's Ccelia . . . 435 



APPENDIX] 



CONTENTS 



XX111 



1594 
1595 

159s 

1595 
1595 

1596 
1596 
1596 

1596 



Zepheria . 


435 


J 597 


Robert Tofte's Laura . 438 


Barnfield's sonnets to 






Sir William Alexander's 


Ganymede 


435 




Aurora . . . .438 


Spenser's Avioretti . 


435 




Sir Fulke Greville's 


Emaricdulfe 


436 




Ccelica . . . .438 


Sir John Davies's Gul- 






Estimate of number of 


linge Sonnets . 


436 




love-sonnets issued be- 


Linche's Diella 


437 




tween 1591 and 1597 . 439 


Griffin's Fidessa 


437 


II. 


Sonnets to patrons, 1591- 


Thomas Campion's son- 






1597 . . . .440 


nets . 


437 


III. 


Sonnets on philosophy 


William Smith's Chloris . 


437 




and religion . . . 440 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON THE SONNET IN FRANCE, 

i 5 50-1 600 



Ronsard (1524-1585) and 
' La Pleiade ' . . . 442 

The Italian sonnetteers of 
the sixteenth century 442 n. 

Philippe Desportes (1546- 
1606) . . . .443 

Chief collections of 



French sonnets pub- 
lished between 1550 and 

1584 ....;-.. 

Minor collections of 
French sonnets pub- 
lished between 1553 and 
1605 .... 



444 



447 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE . . ■ . . Frontispiece 

From the ' Droeshout ' painting, now in the Shake- 
speare Memorial Gallery, Stratford-on-Avon. 

HENRY WRIOTHESLEY, Third Earl of 

Southampton, as a young man . To face p. 145 

From the painting at Welbeck Abbey. 

SHAKESPEARE'S AUTOGRAPH-SIGNATURE 

TO THE PURCHASE-DEED OF A HOUSE IN BLACK- 

friars, dated March io, 1612-3 . . . To face p. 267 

From the original document now preserved in the 
Guildhall Library, London. 

SHAKESPEARE'S AUTOGRAPH-SIGNATURE 

TO A MORTGAGE-DEED RELATING TO THE HOUSE 
PURCHASED BY HIM IN BLACKFRIARS, DATED 

March ii, 1612-3 To face p. 269 

From the original docutnent noiu preserved in the 
British Mtiseum. 

THREE AUTOGRAPH-SIGNATURES severally 

WRITTEN BY SHAKESPEARE ON THE THREE 

SHEETS OF HIS WILL To face p. 2J$ 

From the original document at Somerset House, 
London. 

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE . . .To face p. 295 

From a plaster-cast of the terra-cotta bust now at 
the Garrick Club. 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



PARENTAGE AND BIRTH 

Shakespeare came of a family whose surname was 
borne through the middle ages by residents in very 
Distribu- m any parts of England — at Penrith in 
tionofthe Cumberland, at Kirkland and Doncaster in 
Yorkshire, as well as in nearly all the 
midland counties. The surname had originally a 
martial significance, implying capacity in the wield- 
ing of the spear. 1 Its first recorded holder is John 
Shakespeare, who in 1279 was living at - Freyndon,' 
perhaps Frittenden, Kent. 2 The great mediaeval 
guild of St. Anne at Knowle, whose members in- 
cluded the leading inhabitants of Warwickshire, was 
joined by many Shakespeares in the fifteenth century. 3 

1 Camden, Remains, ed. 1605, p. Ill; Verstegan, Restitution, 1605. 

2 Plac. Cor. 7 Edvv. I, Kane; cf. Notes and Queries, 1st ser. xi. 122. 

3 Cf. the Register of the Guild of St. Anne at Knowle, ed. Bickley, 
1894. 

b I 



2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the sur- 
name is found far more frequently in Warwickshire 
than elsewhere. The archives of no less than twenty- 
four towns and villages there contain notices of 
Shakespeare families in the sixteenth century, and 
as many as thirty-four Warwickshire towns or villages 
were inhabited by Shakespeare families in the seven- 
teenth century. Among them all William was a 
common Christian name. At Rowington, twelve 
miles to the north of Stratford, and in the same 
hundred of Barlichway, one of the most prolific 
Shakespeare families of Warwickshire resided in the 
sixteenth century, and no less than three Richard 
Shakespeares of Rowington, whose extant wills were 
proved respectively in 1560, 1591, and 1614, were 
fathers of sons called William. At least one other 
William Shakespeare was during the period a resi- 
dent in Rowington. As a consequence, the poet has 
been more than once credited with achievements 
which rightly belong to one or other of his numerous 
contemporaries who were identically named. 

The poet's ancestry cannot be defined with abso- 
lute certainty. The poet's father, when applying for 
The poet's a grant of arms in 1596, claimed that his 
ancestry. grandfather (the poet's great-grandfather) 
received for services rendered in war a grant of land 
in Warwickshire from Henry VII. 1 No precise con- 
firmation of this pretension has been discovered, and 
it may be, after the manner of heraldic genealogy, 
fictitious. But there is a probability that the poet 
1 See p. 189. 



PARENTAGE AND BIRTH 3 

came of good yeoman stock, and that his ancestors to 
the fourth or fifth generation were fairly substantial 
landowners. 1 Adam Shakespeare, a tenant by military 
service of land at Baddesley Clinton in 1389, seems 
to have been great-grandfather of one Richard Shake- 
speare who held land at Wroxhall in Warwickshire 
during the first thirty-four years (at least) of the 
sixteenth century. Another Richard Shakespeare 
who is conjectured to have been nearly akin to the 
Wroxhall family was settled as a farmer at Snitter- 
field, a village four miles to the north of Stratford- 
on-Avon, in 1528. 2 It is probable that he was the 
poet's grandfather. In 1550 he was renting a mes- 
suage and land at Snitterfield of Robert Arden ; 
he died at the close of 1560, and on February 10 
of the next year letters of administration of his 
goods, chattels, and debts were issued to his son John 
by the Probate Court at Worcester. His goods were 
valued at 35/, iys. s Besides the son John, Richard 
of Snitterfield certainly had a son Henry ; while a 
Thomas Shakespeare, a considerable landholder at 

1 Cf. Times, October 14, 1895; 'Notes and Queries, 8th ser. viii. 
501; articles by Mrs. Stopes in Genealogical Magazine, 1897. 

2 Cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare, 1887, 
ii. 207. 

3 The purchasing power of money was then eight times what it is 
now, and this and other sums mentioned should be multiplied by eight 
to compare them with modern currency (see p. 197 n). The letters 
of administration in regard to Richard Shakespeare's estate are in the 
district registry of the Probate Court at Worcester, and were printed in 
full by Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps in his Shakespeare's Tours (privately 
issued 1887), pp. 44-5. They do not appear in any edition of Mr. 
Halliwell-Phillipps's Outlines. Certified extracts appeared in Xotesand 
Queries, 8th ser. xii. 463-4. 



4 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Snitterfield between 1563 and 1583, whose parentage 
is undetermined, may have been a third son. The son 
Henry remained all his life at Snitterfield, where he 
engaged in farming with gradually diminishing suc- 
cess ; he died in embarrassed circumstances in Decem- 
ber 1596. John, the son who administered Richard's 
estate, was in all likelihood the poet's father. 

About 1 55 1 John Shakespeare left Snitterfield, 
which was his birthplace, to seek a career in the 
The poet's neighbouring borough of Stratf ord-on-Avon. 
father. There he soon set up as a trader in all 
manner of agricultural produce. Corn, wool, malt, 
meat, skins, and leather were among the commodities 
in which he dealt. Documents of a somewhat later 
date often describe him as a glover. Aubrey, Shake- 
speare's first biographer, reported the tradition that he 
was a butcher. But though both designations doubt- 
less indicated important branches of his business, 
neither can be regarded as disclosing its full extent. 
The land which his family farmed at Snitterfield 
supplied him with his varied stock-in-trade. As long 
as his father lived he seems to have been a frequent 
visitor to Snitterfield, and, like his father and brothers, 
he was until the date of his father's death occasionally 
designated a farmer or ' husbandman ' of that place. 
But it was with Stratford-on-Avon that his life was 
mainly identified. 

In April 1552 he was living there in Henley Street, 
a thoroughfare leading to the market town of Henley- 
in-Arden, and he is first mentioned in the borough 
records as paying in that month a fine of twelve- 



PARENTAGE AND BIRTH 5 

pence for having a dirt-heap in front of his house. 
His frequent appearances in the years that follow as 
His etti either plaintiff or defendant in suits heard 
ment at in the local court of record for the recovery 
Stratford. Q £ sma yj debts suggest that he was a keen man 
of business. In early life he prospered in trade, and 
in October 1556 purchased two freehold tenements at 
Stratford — one, with a garden, in Henley Street (it 
adjoins that now known as the poet's birthplace), and 
the other in Greenhill Street with a garden and croft. 
Thenceforth he played a prominent part in municipal 
affairs. In 1557 he was elected an ale-taster, whose 
duty it was to test the quality of malt liquors and 
bread. About the same time he was elected a burgess 
or town councillor, and in September 1558, and again 
on October 6, 1559, he was appointed one of the 
four petty constables by a vote of the jury of the 
court-leet. Twice — ini559and 1561 — hewaschosen 
one of the affeerors — officers appointed to determine 
the fines for those offences which were punishable 
arbitrarily, and for which no express penalties were 
prescribed by statute. In 1561 he was elected one of 
the two chamberlains of the borough, an office of 
responsibility which he held for two years. He 
delivered his second statement of account to the cor- 
poration in January 1564. When attesting docu- 
ments he occasionally made his mark, but there is 
evidence in the Stratford archives that he could write 
with facility ; and he was credited with financial apti- 
tude. The municipal accounts, which were checked 
by tallies and counters, were audited by him after he 



6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ceased to be chamberlain, and he more than once 
advanced small sums of money to the corporation. 

With characteristic shrewdness he chose a wife of 
assured fortune — Mary, youngest daughter of Robert 
Arden, a wealthy farmer of Wilmcote in the parish of 
Aston Cantlowe, near Stratford. The Arden family 
The poet's in its chief branch, which was settled at Park- 
mother. \\3.\\, Warwickshire, ranked with the most 
influential of the county. Robert Arden, a progenitor 
of that branch, was sheriff of Warwickshire and 
Leicestershire in 1438 (16 Hen. VI), and this sheriff's 
direct descendant, Edward Arden, who was himself 
high sheriff of Warwickshire in 1575, was executed 
in 1583 for alleged complicity in a Roman Catholic 
plot against the life of Queen Elizabeth. 1 John 
Shakespeare's wife belonged to a humbler branch of 
the family, and there is no trustworthy evidence to 
determine the exact degree of kinship between the 
two branches. Her grandfather, Thomas Arden, pur- 
chased in 1 501 an estate at Snitterfield, which passed, 
with other property, to her father Robert; John 
Shakespeare's father, Richard, was one of this Robert 
Arden's Snitterfield tenants. By his first wife, whose 
name is not known, Robert Arden had seven daughters, 
of whom all but two married; John Shakespeare's wife 
seems to have been the youngest. Robert Arden's 
second wife, Agnes or Anne, widow of John Hill 
id. 1545), a substantial farmer of Bearley, survived 
him ; but by her he had no issue. When he died at 
the end of 1556, he owned a farmhouse at Wilmcote 

1 French, Genealogica Shakespeareana, pp.458 seq.; cf. p. 191 infra. 



PARENTAGE AND BIRTH 7 

and many acres, besides some hundred acres at 
Snitterfield, with two farmhouses which he let out 
to tenants. The post-mortem inventory of his goods, 
which was made on December 9, 1556, shows that 
he had lived in comfort ; his house was adorned 
by as many as eleven 'painted cloths,' which then 
did duty for tapestries among the middle class. 
The exordium of his will, which was drawn up on 
November 24, 1556, and proved on December 16 
following, indicates that he was an observant Catholic. 
For his two youngest daughters, Alice and Mary, he 
showed especial affection by nominating them his 
executors. Mary received not only 61. 13s. 4^. in 
money, but the fee-simple of Asbies, his chief pro- 
perty at Wilmcote, consisting of a house with some 
fifty acres of land. She also acquired, under an 
earlier settlement, an interest in two messuages at 
Snitterfield. 1 But, although she was well provided 
with worldly goods, she was apparently without educa- 
tion ; several extant documents bear her mark, and 
there is no proof that she could sign her name. 

John Shakespeare's marriage with Mary Arden 
doubtless took place at Aston Cantlowe, the parish 
church of Wilmcote, in the autumn of 1557 (the 
church registers begin at a later date). On Septem- 
ber 15, 1558, his first child, a daughter, Joan, was 
baptised in the church of Stratford. A second child, 
another daughter, Margaret, was baptised on Decem- 
ber 2, 1562 ; but both these children died in infancy. 
The poet William, the first son and third child, was 

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 179. 



8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

born on April 22 or 23, 1564. The latter date is 
generally accepted as his birthday, mainly (it would 
The poet's a PP ear ) on the ground that it was the day 
birth and of his death. There is no positive evidence 
aptism. on t ^ e su kj ec ^ but the Stratford parish 

registers attest that he was baptised on April 26. 

Some doubt is justifiable as to the ordinarily 
accepted scene of his birth. Of two adjoining houses 
Alleged forming a detached building on the north 
birthplace. side of Henley Street, that to the east was 
purchased by John Shakespeare in 1556, but there is 
no evidence that he owned or occupied the house to 
the west before 1575. Yet this western house has 
been known since 1759 as the poet's birthplace, and 
a room on the first floor is claimed as that in which 
he was born. 1 The two houses subsequently came 
by bequest of the poet's granddaughter to the family 
of the poet's sister, Joan Hart, and while the eastern 
tenement was let out to strangers for more than 
two centuries, and by them converted into an inn, 
the 'birthplace' was until 1806 occupied by the 
Harts, who latterly carried on there the trade of 
butcher. The fact of its long occupancy by the 
poet's collateral descendants accounts for the identi- 
fication of the western rather than the eastern tene- 
ment with his birthplace. Both houses were pur- 
chased in behalf of subscribers to a public fund in 
1 846, and, after extensive restoration, were converted 
into a single domicile for the purposes of a public 
museum. They were presented under a deed of 

1 Cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, Letter to Elze, 1888. 



PARENTAGE AND BIRTH 9 

trust to the Corporation of Stratford in 1866. Much 
of the Elizabethan timber and stonework survives, 
but a cellar under the ' birthplace ' is the only por- 
tion which remains as it was at the date of the poet's 
birth, 1 

1 Cf. Documents and Sketches in Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 377-99. 



10 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



II 

CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 

In July 1564, when William was three months old, 
the plague raged with unwonted vehemence at Strat- 
The father f° r d> aR d n ^ s father liberally contributed to 
in munici- the relief of its poverty-stricken victims. 
pa o ce. Fortune s tiU favoured him. On July 4, 1565, 
he reached the dignity of an alderman. From 1567 
onwards he was accorded in the corporation archives 
the honourable prefix of ' Mr.' At Michaelmas 1568 
he attained the highest office in the corporation gift, 
that of bailiff, and during his year of office the corpo- 
ration for the first time entertained actors at Stratford. 
The Queen's Company and the Earl of Worcester's 
Company each received from John Shakespeare an 
official welcome. 1 On September 5, 1 571, he was chief 

1 The Rev. Thomas Carter, in Shakespeare, Puritan and Recusant, 
1897, has endeavoured to show that John Shakespeare was a puritan 
in religious matters, inclining to nonconformity. He deduces this 
inference from the fact that, at the period of his prominent association 
with the municipal government of Stratford, the corporation ordered 
images to be defaced (1562-3) and ecclesiastical vestments to be sold 
(1571). These entries merely prove that the aldermen and councillors 
of Stratford strictly conformed to the new religion as by law established 
in the first years of Elizabeth's reign. Nothing can be deduced from 
them in regard to the private religious opinions of John Shakespeare. 
The circumstance that he was the first bailiff to encourage actors to 



CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND . MARRIAGE II 

alderman, a post which he retained till September 30 
the following year. In 1573 Alexander Webbe, the 
husband of his wife's sister Agnes, made him overseer 
of his will ; in 1 575 he bought two houses in Stratford, 
one of them doubtless the alleged birthplace in Henley 
Street; in 1576 he contributed twelvepence to the 
beadle's salary. But after Michaelmas 1572 he took 
a less active part in municipal affairs ; he grew 
irregular in his attendance at the council meetings, 
and signs were soon apparent that his luck had 
turned. In 1578 he was unable to pay, with his 
colleagues, either the sum of fourpence for the relief 
of the poor or his contribution ' towards the furniture 
of three pikemen, two bellmen, and one archer ' who 
were sent by the corporation to attend a muster of the 
trained bands of the county. 

Meanwhile his family was increasing. Four chil- 
dren besides the poet — three sons, Gilbert (baptised 
Brothers October 13, 1566), Richard (baptised March 
and sisters. l x 1574), and Edmund (baptised May 3, 
1580), with a daughter Joan (baptised April 15, 1569) 
— reached maturity. A daughter Ann was baptised 
September 28, 1 571, and was buried on April 4, 1579. 
To meet his growing liabilities, the father borrowed 
money from his wife's kinsfolk, and he and his wife 

visit Stratford is, on the other hand, conclusive proof that his religion 
was not that of the contemporary puritan, whose hostility to all forms of 
dramatic representations was one of his most persistent characteristics. 
The Elizabethan puritans, too, according to Guillim's Display of 
Heraldrie (1610), regarded coat-armour with abhorrence, yet John 
Shakespeare with his son made persistent application for a grant of 
arms to the College of Arms. (Cf. infra, pp. 186 seq.) 



12 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

mortgaged, on November 14, 1578, Asbies, her 
valuable property at Wilmcote, for 40/. to Edmund 
Lambert of Barton-on-the-Heath, who had married 
her sister, Joan Arden. Lambert was to receive no 
interest on his loan, but was to take the ' rents and 
profits ' of the estate. Asbies was thereby alienated 
for ever. Next year, on October 15, 1579, John and 
his wife made over to Robert Webbe, doubtless a 
relative of Alexander Webbe, for the sum apparently 
of 40/., his wife's property at Snitterfield. 1 

John Shakespeare obviously chafed under the 
humiliation of having parted, although as he hoped 
The only temporarily, with his wife's property of 

financial Asbies, and in the autumn of 1 580 he offered 
difficulties, to pay off the mortgage ; but his brother-in- 
law, Lambert, retorted that other sums were owing, 
and he would accept all or none. The negotiation, 
which was the beginning of much litigation, thus 
proved abortive. Through 1585 and 1586 a creditor, 
John Brown, was embarrassingly importunate, and, 
after obtaining a writ of distraint, Brown informed 
the local court that the debtor had no goods on which 
distraint could be levied. 2 On September 6, 1586, 
John was deprived of his alderman's gown, on the 
ground of his long absence from the council meetings. 3 

1 The sum is stated to be 4/. in one document (Halliwell-Phillipps, 
ii. 176) and 40/. in another {ib. p. 179); the latter is more likely to be 
correct. 2 Ib. ii. 238. 

3 Efforts recently made to assign the embarrassments of Shake- 
speare's father to another John Shakespeare of Stratford deserve little 
attention. The second John Shakespeare or Shakspere (as his name is 
usually spelt) came to Stratford as a young man in 1584, and was for ten 
years a well-to-do shoemaker in Bridge Street, filling the office of Master 



CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 1 3 

Happily John Shakespeare was at no expense for 

the education of his four sons. They were entitled 

to free tuition at the grammar school of Stratford, 

which was reconstituted on a mediaeval foundation 

by Edward VI. The eldest son, William, 

Education. ... . . 

probably entered the school in 1571, when 
Walter Roche was master, and perhaps he knew some- 
thing of Thomas Hunt, who succeeded Roche in 1577. 
The instruction that he received was mainly confined 
to the Latin language and literature. From the Latin 
accidence, boys of the period, at schools of the type 
of that at Stratford, were led, through conversation 
books like the ' Sentential Pueriles ' and Lily's 
grammar, to the perusal of such authors as Seneca, 
Terence, Cicero, Virgil, Plautus, Ovid, and Horace. 
The eclogues of the popular renaissance poet, Man- 
tuanus, were often preferred to Virgil's for beginners. 
The rudiments of Greek were occasionally taught 
in Elizabethan grammar schools to very promising 
pupils ; but such coincidences as have been detected 
between expressions in Greek plays and in Shake- 
speare, seem due to accident, and not to any study, 
either at school or elsewhere, of the Athenian drama. 1 

of the Shoemakers' Company in 1592 — a certain sign of pecuniary 
stability. He left Stratford in 1594 (cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 137-40). 
1 James Russell Lowell, who noticed some close parallels between 
expressions of Shakespeare and those of the Greek tragedians, hazarded 
the suggestion that Shakespeare may have studied the ancient drama in 
a Greece et Latine edition. I believe Lowell's parallelisms to be 
no more than curious accidents — proofs of consanguinity of spirit, 
not of any indebtedness on Shakespeare's part. In the Electra of 
Sophocles, which is akin in its leading motive to Hamlet, the Chorus 
consoles Electra for the supposed death of Orestes with the same com- 



14 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Dr. Farmer enunciated in his ' Essay on Shake- 
speare's Learning' (1767) the theory that Shakespeare 
knew no language but his own, and owed whatever 
knowledge he displayed of the classics and of Italian 
and French literature to English translations. But 
several of the books in French and Italian whence 
Shakespeare derived the plots of his dramas — Belle- 
forest's ' Histoires Tragiques,' Ser Giovanni's ' II 
Pecorone,' and Cinthio's ' Hecatommithi,' for example 

monplace argument as that with which Hamlet's mother and uncle seek 
to console him. In Electro, are the lines 1171-3: 

QprfTou ireipvKas irarpos, HXeKrpa, (ppovef 
QvrjTos 5' '0pe<TT7)s' wore p.7} \lav areve. 
TLdcriv yap ijfjuv tovt o^et'Aercu iradeiv 

{i.e. ' Remember, Electra, your father whence you sprang is dead. 
Dead, too, is Orestes. Wherefore grieve not overmuch, for by all of us 
has this debt of suffering to be paid ' ). In Hcwilet (1. ii. 72 seq.) are the 
familiar sentences : 

Thou know'st 'tis common ; all that live must die. . . . 
But you must know, your father lost a father; 
That father lost, lost his . . . But to persever 
In obstinate condolement is a course 
Of impious stubbornness. 

Cf. Sophocles's QLdipns Colonetis, 880 : Tots tol 8iKaiois %a jSpaxvs viica 
ixtyav ('In a just cause the weak vanquishes the strong,' Jebb), and 
2 Henry VI, iii. 233, ' Thrice is he armed that hath his quarrel just.' 
Shakespeare's ' prophetic soul ' in Hamlet (1. v. 40) and the Sonnets (cvii. 
1) may be matched by the irpbixavris 6v/jl6s of Euripides's Andromache, 
1075; and Hamlet's ' sea of troubles ' (ill. i. 59) by the KaicQv irtXayos 
of yEschylus's Persce, 443. Among all the creations of Shakespearean 
and Greek drama, Lady Macbeth and ^Lschylus's Clytemnestra, who 
' in man's counsels bore no woman's heart ' (ywaiicds &i>8p6f3ov\ov 
£\irl£ov K.£ap, Agamemnon, n), most closely resemble each other. But 
a study of the points of resemblance attests no knowledge of ^Eschylus 
on Shakespeare's part, but merely the close community of tragic genius 
that subsisted between the two poets. 



CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 1 5 

— were not accessible to him in English translations ; 
and on more general grounds the theory of his igno- 
rance is adequately confuted. A boy with Shake- 
speare's exceptional alertness of intellect, during 
whose schooldays a training in Latin classics lay 
within reach, could hardly lack in future years all 
means of access to the literature of France and Italy. 
With the Latin and French languages, indeed, 
and with many Latin poets of the school curriculum, 
Shakespeare in his writings openly acknowledged his 
acquaintance. In ' Henry V ' the dialogue in many 
scenes is carried on in French, which is grammatically 
accurate if not idiomatic. In the mouth of his school- 
masters, Holofernes in ' Love's Labour's Lost ' and 
The oet's Sir Hugh Evans in ' Merry Wives of 
classical Windsor,' Shakespeare placed Latin phrases 
eqmpmen . ^ rawn directly from Lily's grammar, from 
the 'Sententiae Pueriles,' and from 'the good old 
Mantuan.' The influence of Ovid, especially the 
'Metamorphoses,' was apparent throughout his earliest 
literary work, both poetic and dramatic, and is dis- 
cernible in the ' Tempest,' his latest play (v. i. 33 seq.). 
In the Bodleian Library there is a copy of the Aldine 
edition of Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' (1502) and on 
the title is the signature ' W m . Sh e .,' which experts 
have declared — not quite conclusively — to be a 
genuine autograph of the poet. 1 Ovid's Latin text 
was certainly not unfamiliar to him, but his closest 
adaptations of Ovid's ' Metamorphoses ' often reflect 
the phraseology of the popular English version by 

1 Macray, Annals of the Bodleian Library, 1890, pp. 379 seq. 



1 6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Arthur Golding, of which some seven editions were 
issued between 1565 and 1597. From Plautus 
Shakespeare drew the plot of the ' Comedy of Errors,' 
but it is just possible that Plautus's comedies, too, 
were accessible in English. Shakespeare had no title 
to rank as a classical scholar, and he did not disdain 
a liberal use of translations. His lack of exact 
scholarship fully accounts for the ' small Latin and 
less Greek ' with which he was credited by his 
scholarly friend, Ben Jonson. But Aubrey's report 
that ' he understood Latin pretty well ' need not be 
contested, and his knowledge of French may be 
estimated to have equalled his knowledge of Latin, 
while he doubtless possessed just sufficient acquaint- 
ance with Italian to enable him to discern the drift 
of an Italian poem or novel. 1 

Of the few English books accessible to him in his 
schooldays, the chief was the English Bible, either 
in the popular Genevan version, first issued in a com- 
plete form in 1560, or in the bishops' revision of 1568, 
which the Authorised Version of 161 1 closely followed. 
References to scriptural characters and incidents are 
not conspicuous in Shakespeare's plays, but such as 
Shake- they are, they are drawn from all parts of 
speareand the Bible, and indicate that general ac- 
the Bible. q Uam tance with the narrative of both Old 
and New Testaments which a clever boy would be 
certain to acquire either in the schoolroom or at 
church on Sundays. Shakespeare quotes or adapts 

1 Cf. Spencer Baynes, ' What Shakespeare learnt at School,' in 
Shakespeare Studies, 1894, pp. 147 seq. 



CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 1 7 

biblical phrases with far greater frequency than he 
makes allusion to episodes in biblical history. But 
many such phrases enjoyed proverbial currency, and 
others which were more recondite were borrowed 
from Holinshed's ' Chronicles ' and secular works 
whence he drew his plots. As a rule his use of scrip- 
tural phraseology, as of scriptural history, suggests 
youthful reminiscence and the assimilative tendency 
of the mind in a stage of early development rather 
than close and continuous study of the Bible in adult 
life. 1 

Shakespeare was a schoolboy in July 1575, when 
Queen Elizabeth made a progress through Warwick- 
shire on a visit to her favourite, the Earl of Leicester, 
at his castle of Kenilworth. References have been 
detected in Oberon's vision in Shakespeare's ' Mid- 
summer Night's Dream ' (11. ii. 148-68) to the fantastic 
pageants and masques with which the Queen during 
her stay was entertained in Kenilworth Park. Lei- 
cester's residence was only fifteen miles from Stratford, 
and it is possible that Shakespeare went thither with 
his father to witness some of the open-air festivities ; 
but two full descriptions which were published in 
1576, in pamphlet form, gave Shakespeare knowledge 
of all that took place. 2 Shakespeare's opportunities of 
recreation outside Stratford were in any case restricted 
during his schooldays. His father's financial difficul- 

1 Bishop Charles Wordsworth, in his Shakespeare's Knowledge and 
Use of the Bible (4th ed. 1892), gives a long list of passages for which 
Shakespeare may have been indebted to the Bible. But the Bishop's 
deductions as to the strength of Shakespeare's piety are strained. 

2 See p. 160 infra. 



1 8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ties grew steadily, and they caused his removal from 
school at an unusually early age. Probably in 1577, 
With- when he was thirteen, he was enlisted by his 

from* father in an effort to restore his decaying for- 

schooi. tunes. ' I have been told heretofore,' wrote 
Aubrey, ' by some of the neighbours that when he was a 
boy he exercised his father's trade,' which, according to 
the writer, was that of a butcher. It is possible that 
John's ill-luck at the period compelled him to confine 
himself to this occupation, which in happier days 
formed only one branch of his business. His son may 
have been formally apprenticed to him. An early Strat- 
ford tradition describes him as ' a butcher's apprentice.' 2 
' When he kill'd a calf,' Aubrey proceeds less convin- 
cingly, ' he would doe it in a high style and make a 
speech. There was at that time another butcher's 
son in this towne, that was held not at all inferior to 
him for a naturall witt, his acquaintance, and coeta- 
nean, but dyed young.' 

At the end of 1582 Shakespeare, when little more 
than eighteen and a half years old, took a step which 
The poet's was little calculated to lighten his father's 
marriage, anxieties. He married. His wife, accord- 
ing to the inscription on her tombstone, was his 
senior by eight years. Rowe states that she ' was the 
daughter of one Hathaway, said to have been a sub- 
stantial yeoman in the neighbourhood of Stratford.' 

On September 1, 1 581, Richard Hathaway, 'hus- 
bandman ' of Shottery, a hamlet in the parish of Old 

1 Notes of John Duwdall, a tourist in Warwickshire in 1693 
(published in 1838). 



CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 1 9 

Stratford, made his will, which was proved on July 9, 
1582, and is now preserved at Somerset House. 
Richard ^ s nouse an ^ land, ' two and a half 
Hathaway virgates,' had been long held in copyhold 

ofShottery. by ^ family> and he died [n fairly pr0 _ 

sperous circumstances. His wife Joan, the chief 
legatee, was directed to carry on the farm with the aid 
of her eldest son, Bartholomew, to whom a share in 
its . proceeds was assigned. Six other children — three 
sons and three daughters — received sums of money; 
Agnes, the eldest daughter, and Catherine, the second 
daughter, were each allotted 6/. 13J. 4^/., 'to be paid 
at the day of her marriage,' a phrase common in wills 
Anne of the period. Anne and Agnes were in the 

Hathaway, sixteenth century alternative spellings of the 
same Christian name ; and there is little doubt that 
the daughter 'Agnes' of Richard H[athaway_'s will be- 
came, within a few months of Richard Hathaway's 
death, Shakespeare's wife. 

The house at Shottery, now known as Anne 
Hathaway's cottage, and reached from Stratford by 
field-paths, undoubtedly once formed part of Richard 
Anne Hathaway's farmhouse, and, despite nume- 

way's^ot- rous alterations and renovations, still pre- 
tage. serves many features of a thatched farmhouse 

of the Elizabethan period. The house remained in 
the Hathaway family till 1838, although the male line 
became extinct in 1746. It was purchased in behalf 
of the public by the Birthplace trustees in 1892. 

No record of the solemnisation of Shakespeare's 
marriage survives. Although the parish of Stratford 



20 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

included Shottery, and thus both bride and bride- 
groom were parishioners, the Stratford parish register 
is silent on the subject. A local tradition, which 
seems to have come into being during the present 
century, assigns the ceremony to the neighbouring 
hamlet or chapelry of Luddington, of which neither 
the chapel nor parish registers now exist. But one 
important piece of documentary evidence directly 
bearing on the poet's matrimonial venture is accessible. 
In the registry of the bishop of the diocese (Worcester) 
a deed is extant wherein Fulk Sandells and John 
Richardson, ' husbandmen of Stratford,' bound them- 
selves in the bishop's consistory court, on November 
28, 1582, in a surety of 40/., to free the bishop of all 
liability should a lawful impediment — ' by reason of 
The bond any precontract' [i.e. with a third party] or 
Tmpedi- consanguinity — be subsequently disclosed to 
ments. imperil the validity of the marriage, then in 
contemplation, of William Shakespeare with Anne 
Hathaway. On the assumption that no such impedi- 
ment was known to exist, and provided that Anne 
obtained the consent of her 'friends,' the marriage 
might proceed ' with once asking of the bannes of 
matrimony betwene them.' 

Bonds of similar purport, although differing in 
significant details, are extant in all diocesan registries 
of the sixteenth century. They were obtainable on 
the payment of a fee to the bishop's commissary, and 
had the effect of expediting the marriage ceremony 
while protecting the clergy from the consequences of 
any possible breach of canonical law. But they were not 



CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 21 

common, and it was rare for persons in the compara- 
tively humble position in life of Anne Hathaway and 
young Shakespeare to adopt such cumbrous formalities 
when there was always available the simpler, less ex- 
pensive, and more leisurely method of marriage by 
'thrice asking of the banns.' Moreover, the wording 
of the bond which was drawn before Shakespeare's 
marriage differs in important respects from that 
adopted in all other known examples. 1 In the latter 
it is invariably provided that the marriage shall not 
take place without the consent of the parents or 
governors of both bride and bridegroom. In the case 
of the marriage of an ' infant ' bridegroom the formal 
consent of his parents was absolutely essential to 
strictly regular procedure, although clergymen might 
be found who were ready to shut their eyes to the 
facts of the situation and to run the risk of solemnis- 
ing the marriage of an ' infant ' without inquiry as to 
the parents' consent. The clergyman who united 
Shakespeare in wedlock to Anne Hathaway was 
obviously of this easy temper. Despite the circum- 
stance that Shakespeare's bride was of full age and he 
himself was by nearly three years a minor, the Shake- 
speare bond stipulated merely for the consent of the 
bride's 'friends,' and ignored the bridegroom's pa- 
rents altogether. Nor was this the only irregularity 
in the document. In other pre-matrimonial covenants 

1 These conclusions are drawn from an examination of like docu- 
ments in the Worcester diocesan registry. Many formal declarations 
of consent on the part of parents to their children's marriages are also 
extant there among the sixteenth-century archives. 



22 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of the kind the name either of the bridegroom him- 
self or of the bridegroom's father figures as one of the 
two sureties, and is mentioned first of the two. Had the 
usual form been followed, Shakespeare's father would 
have been the chief party to the transaction in behalf 
of his ' infant ' son. But in the Shakespeare bond 
the sole sureties, Sandells and Richardson, were farm- 
ers of Shottery, the bride's native place. Sandells 
was a ' supervisor ' of the will of the bride's father, 
who there describes him as ' my trustie friende and 
neighbour.' 

The prominence of the Shottery husbandmen in 
the negotiations preceding Shakespeare's marriage 
suggests the true position of affairs. Sandells and 
Richardson, representing the lady's family, doubtless 
secured the deed on their own initiative, so that 
Shakespeare might have small opportunity of evad- 
ing a step which his intimacy with their friend's 
daughter had rendered essential to her reputation. 
The wedding probably took place, without the con- 
sent of the bridegroom's parents, — it may be without 
their knowledge, — soon after the signing of the 
deed. Within six months — in May 1583 — a daugh- 
Birthofa ter was born to the poet, and was baptised 
daughter. - m ^ Q name of Susanna at Stratford parish 
church on the 26th. 

Shakespeare's apologists have endeavoured to 
show that the public betrothal or formal * troth-plight ' 
which was at the time a common prelude to a wed- 
ding carried with it all the privileges of marriage. 
But neither Shakespeare's detailed description of a 



CHILDHOOD, EDUCATION, AND MARRIAGE 23 

betrothal * nor of the solemn verbal contract that 

ordinarily preceded marriage lends the contention 

Formal much support. Moreover, the whole circum- 

betrothai stances of the case render it highly im- 
probably 
dispensed probable that Shakespeare and his bride 

with. submitted to the formal preliminaries of a 

betrothal. In that ceremony the parents of both con- 
tracting parties invariably played foremost parts, 
but the wording of the bond precludes the assumption 
that the bridegroom's parents were actors in any 
scene of the hurriedly planned drama of his marriage. 
A difficulty has been imported into the narration 
of the poet's matrimonial affairs by the assumption 
of his identity with one 'William Shakespeare,' to 
whom, according to an entry in the Bishop of Wor- 
cester's register, a license was issued on November 27, 
1582 (the day before the signing of the Hathaway 
bond), authorising his marriage with Anne Whateley 
of Temple Grafton. The theory that the maiden 
name of Shakespeare's wife was Whateley is quite 
untenable, and it is unsafe to assume that the bishop's 
clerk, when making a note of the grant of the license 
in his register, erred so extensively as to write ' Anne 

1 Twelfth Night, act v. sc. i. 11. 160-4 : 

A contract of eternal bond of love, 

Confirm'd by mutual joinder of your hands, 

Attested by the holy close of lips, 

Strengthen'd by interchangement of your rings ; 

And all the ceremony of this compact 

Seal'd in my [i.e. the priest's] function by my testimony. 

In Measure for Measure Claudio's offence is intimacy with the Lady 
Julia after the contract of betrothal and before the formality of marriage 
(cf. act i. scii. 1. 155, act iv. sc. i. 1. 73). 



24 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Whateley of Temple Grafton ' for ' Anne Hathaway 
of Shottery.' The husband of Anne Whateley cannot 
reasonably be identified with the poet. He was doubt- 
less another of the numerous William Shakespeares 
who abounded in the diocese of Worcester. Had a 
license for the poet's marriage been secured on Novem- 
ber 27, 1 it is unlikely that the Shottery husbandmen 
would have entered next day into a bond ' against 
impediments,' the execution of which might well 
have been demanded as a preliminary to the grant 
of a license but was wholly supererogatory after the 
grant was made. 

1 No marriage registers of the period are extant at Temple Grafton 
to inform us whether Anne Whateley actually married her William 
Shakespeare or who precisely the parties were. A Whateley family 
resided in Stratford, but there is nothing to show that Anne of Temple 
Grafton was connected with it. The chief argument against the con- 
clusion that the marriage license and the marriage bond concerned 
different couples lies in the apparent improbability that two persons, 
both named William Shakespeare, should on two successive days not 
only be arranging with the Bishop of Worcester's official to marry, but 
should be involving themselves, whether on their own initiative or on 
that of their friends, in more elaborate and expensive forms of proced- 
ure than were habitual to the humbler ranks of contemporary society. 
But the Worcester diocese covered a very wide area, and was honey- 
combed with Shakespeare families of all degrees of gentility. The 
William Shakespeare whom Anne Whateley was licensed to marry may 
have been of a superior station, to which marriage by license was 
deemed appropriate. On the unwarranted assumption of the identity 
of the William Shakespeare of the marriage bond with the William 
Shakespeare of the marriage license, a romantic theory has been 
based to the effect that ' Anne Whateley of Temple Grafton,' believing 
herself to have a just claim to the poet's hand, secured the license on 
hearing of the proposed action of Anne Hathaway's friends, and hoped, 
by moving in the matter a day before the Shottery husbandmen, to 
insure Shakespeare's fidelity to his alleged pledges. 



THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD 25 



III 

THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD 

Anne Hathaway's greater burden of years and the 
likelihood that the poet was forced into marrying her 
by her friends were not circumstances of happy augury. 
Although it is dangerous to read into Shakespeare's 
dramatic utterances allusions to his personal experi- 
ence, the emphasis with which he insists that a 
woman should take in marriage an ' elder than her- 
self,' 1 and that prenuptial intimacy is productive of 
'barren hate, sour-ey'd disdain, and discord,' suggest 
a personal interpretation. 2 To both these unpromis- 
ing features was added, in the poet's case, the absence 
of a means of livelihood, and his course of life in the 

1 Twelfth Night, act ii. sc. iv. 1. 29 : 

Let still the woman take 
An elder than herself; so wears she to him, 
So sways she level in her husband's heart. . . 

2 Tempest, act iv. sc. i. 11. 15-22 : 

If thou dost break her virgin knot before 
All sanctimonious ceremonies may 
With full and holy rite be minister'd, 
No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall 
To make this contract grow; but barren hate, 
Sour-ey'd disdain, and discord, shall bestrew 
The union of your bed with weeds so loathly 
That you shall hate it both. 



26 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

years that immediately followed implies that he bore 
his domestic ties with impatience. Early in 1585 
twins were born to him, a son (Hamnet) and a 
daughter (Judith) ; both were baptised on February 2. 
All the evidence points to the conclusion, which 
the fact that he had no more children confirms, 
that in the later months of the year (1585) he left 
Stratford, and that, although he was never wholly 
estranged from his family, he saw little of wife or 
children for eleven years. Between the winter of 
1585 and the autumn of 1596 — an interval which 
synchronises with his first literary triumphs — there is 
only one shadowy mention of his name in Stratford 
records. In April 1587 there died Edmund Lambert, 
who held Asbies under the mortgage of 1578, and a 
few months later Shakespeare's name, as owner of a 
contingent interest, was joined to that of his father 
and mother in a formal assent given to an abortive 
proposal to confer on Edmund's son and heir, John 
Lambert, an absolute title to the estate on condition 
of his cancelling the mortgage and paying 20/. But 
the deed does not indicate that Shakespeare per- 
sonally assisted at the transaction. 1 

Shakespeare's early literary work proves that 
while in the country he eagerly studied birds, flowers, 
and trees, and gained a detailed knowledge of horses 
and dogs. All his kinsfolk were farmers, and with 
them he doubtless as a youth practised many field 
sports. Sympathetic references to hawking, hunting, 
coursing, and angling abound in his early plays and 

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. n-13. 



THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD 2/ 

poems. 1 And his sporting experiences passed at times 
beyond orthodox limits. A poaching adventure, ac- 
cording to a credible tradition, was the immediate 
cause of his long severance from his native place. 'He 
had,' wrote Rowe in 1709, 'by a misfortune common 
enough to young fellows, fallen into ill company, and, 
among them, some, that made a frequent practice of 
deer-stealing, engaged him with them more than 
Poachin°- once * n r °bbing a park that belonged to Sir 
atcharie- Thomas Lucy of Charlecote near Stratford. 
For this he was prosecuted by that gentle- 
man, as he thought, somewhat too severely ; and, in 
order to revenge that ill-usage, he made a ballad upon 
him, and though this, probably the first essay of his 
poetry, be lost, yet it is said to have been so very 
bitter that it redoubled the prosecution against him 
to that degree that he was obliged to leave his 
business and family in Warwickshire and shelter 
himself in London.' The independent testimony of 
Archdeacon Davies, who was vicar of Saperton, 
Gloucestershire, late in the seventeenth century, is to 
the effect that Shakespeare ' was much given to all 
uhluckiness in stealing venison and rabbits, par- 
ticularly from Sir Thomas Lucy, who had him oft 
whipt, and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made 
him fly his native county to his great advancement.' 
The law of Shakespeare's day (5 Eliz. cap. 21) 

1 Cf. Ellacombe, Shakespeare as an Angler, 1883; J- E. Harting, 
Ornithology of Shakespeare, 1872. The best account of Shakespeare's 
knowledge of sport is given by the Right Hon. D. H. Madden in his 
entertaining and at the same time scholarly Diary of Master William 
Silence : a Study of Shakespeare and Elizabethan Sport, 1897. 



28 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

punished deer-stealers with three months' imprison- 
ment and the payment of thrice the amount of the 
damage done. 

The tradition has been challenged on the ground 
that the Charlecote deer-park was of later date than 
Unwar- the sixteenth century. But Sir Thomas 

ranted Lucy was an extensive game-preserver, 

doubts of / -,^11 ..,.■, 

thetradi- and owned at Charlecote a warren in which 

tion. a f ew h ar t_ s or does doubtless found an 

occasional home. Samuel Ireland was informed 
in 1794 that Shakespeare stole the deer, not from 
Charlecote, but from Fulbroke Park, a few miles 
off, and Ireland supplied in his 'Views on the 
Warwickshire Avon,' 1795, an engraving of an old 
farmhouse in the hamlet of Fulbroke, where he as- 
serted that Shakespeare was temporarily imprisoned 
after his arrest. An adjoining hovel was locally 
known for some years as Shakespeare's ' deer-barn,' 
but no portion of Fulbroke Park, which included the 
site of these buildings (now removed), was Lucy's 
property in Elizabeth's reign, and the amended 
legend, which was solemnly confided to Sir Walter 
Scott in 1828 by the owner of Charlecote, seems pure 
invention. 1 

The ballad which Shakespeare is reported to have 
fastened on the park gates of Charlecote does not, as 
Rowe acknowledged, survive. No authenticity can 
be allowed the worthless lines beginning ' A parlia- 
ment member, a justice of peace,' which were repre- 

1 Cf. C. Holte Bracebridge, Shakespeare no Poacher, 1862; Lock- 
hart, Life of Scott, vii. 123. 



THE FAREWELL TO STRATFORD 29 

sented to be Shakespeare's on the authority of an old 
man who lived near Stratford and died in 1703. But 
such an incident as the tradition reveals has left a 
distinct impress on Shakespearean drama. Justice 
justice Shallow is beyond doubt a reminiscence of 
shallow. ^g owner f Charlecote. According to 
Archdeacon Davies of Saperton, Shakespeare's ' re- 
venge was so great that ' he caricatured Lucy as 
'Justice Clodpate,' who was (Davies adds) represented 
on the stage as ' a great man,' and as bearing, in 
allusion to Lucy's name, 'three louses rampant for 
his arms.' Justice" Shallow, Davies's 'Justice Clod- 
pate,' came to birth in the ' Second Part of Henry IV ' 
(1598), and he is represented in the opening scene of 
the ' Merry Wives of Windsor ' as having come from 
Gloucestershire to Windsor to make a Star-Chamber 
matter of a poaching raid on his estate. The ' three 
luces hauriant argent ' were the arms borne by the 
Charlecote Lucys, and the dramatist's prolonged 
reference in this scene to the ' dozen white luces ' 
on Justice Shallow's ' old coat ' fully establishes 
Shallow's identity with Lucy. 

" The poaching episode is best assigned to 1585, 
but it may be questioned whether Shakespeare, on 
The flight A eem g from Lucy's persecution, at once 
from strat- sought an asylum in London. William Bees- 
ton, a seventeenth-century actor, remem- 
bered hearing that he had been for a time a country 
schoolmaster 'in his younger years,' and it seems 
possible that on first leaving Stratford he found some 
such employment in a neighbouring village. The 



30 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

suggestion that he joined, at the end of 1585, a band of 
youths of the district in serving in the Low Countries 
under the Earl of Leicester, whose castle of Kenil- 
worth was within easy reach of Stratford, is based on 
an obvious confusion between him and others of his 
name. 1 The knowledge of a soldier's life which 
Shakespeare exhibited in his plays is no greater and 
no less than that which he displayed of almost all 
other spheres of human activity, and to assume that 
he wrote of all or of any from practical experience, 
unless the evidence be conclusive, is to underrate his 
intuitive power of realising life under almost every 
aspect by force of his imagination. 

1 Cf. W. J. Thorns, Three Notelets on Shakespeare, 1865, pp. 
16 seq. 



ON THE LONDON STAGE 



IV 

ON THE LONDON STAGE 

To London Shakespeare naturally drifted, doubt- 
less trudging thither on foot during 1586, by way 
The jour- of Oxford" and High Wycombe. 1 Tradition 
neyto points to that as Shakespeare's favoured 

route, rather than to the road by Banbury 
and Aylesbury. Aubrey asserts that at Grendon 
near Oxford, ' he happened to take the humour of 
the constable in " Midsummer Night's Dream " ' — by 
which he meant, we may suppose, ' Much Ado about 
Nothing ' — but there were watchmen of the Dogberry 
type all over England, and probably at Stratford 
itself. The Crown Inn (formerly 3 Cornmarket 
Street) near Carfax, at Oxford, was long pointed out 
as one of his resting-places. 

To only one resident in London is Shakespeare 
likely to have been known previously. 2 Richard 

1 Cf. Hales, Notes on Shakespeare, 1884, pp. 1-24. 

2 The common assumption that Richard Burbage, the chief actor with 
whom Shakespeare was associated, was a native of Stratford is wholly 
erroneous. Richard was born in Shoreditch, and his father came from 
Hertfordshire. John Heming, another of Shakespeare's actor-friends 
who has also been claimed as a native of Stratford, was beyond reason- 
able doubt born at Droitwich in Worcestershire. Thomas Greene, a 



32 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Field, a native of Stratford, and son of a friend of 
Shakespeare's father, had left Stratford in 1579 
Richard to serve an apprenticeship with Thomas 
Field, his Vautrollier, the London printer. Shake- 
speare and Field, who was made free of the 
Stationers' Company in 1587, were soon associated 
as author and publisher; but the theory that Field 
found work for Shakespeare in Vautrollier's print- 
ing-office is fanciful. 1 No more can be said for the 
attempt to prove that he obtained employment as 
a lawyer's clerk. In view of his general quickness 
of apprehension, Shakespeare's accurate use of legal 
terms, which deserves all the attention that has been 
paid it, may be attributable in part to his observation 
of the many legal processes in which his father was 
involved, and in part to early intercourse with 
members of the Inns of Court. 2 

Tradition and common-sense alike point to one 
of the only two theatres (The Theatre or The Curtain) 
Theatrical tnat ex i ste d m London at the date of his 
employ- arrival as an early scene of his regular 
occupation. The compiler of ' Lives of the 
Poets' (1753) 3 was the first to relate the story that 

popular comic actor at the Red Bull Theatre early in the seventeenth 
century, is conjectured to have belonged to Stratford on no grounds 
that deserve attention ; Shakespeare was in no way associated with 
him. 

1 Blades, Shakspere and Typography, 1872. 

2 Cf. Lord Campbell, Shakespeare' 's Legal Acquirements, 1859. 
Legal terminology abounded in all plays and poems of the period, e.g. 
Barnabe Barnes's Sonnets, 1593, and Zepheria, 1594 (see Appendix ix). 

3 Commonly assigned to Theophilus Cibber, but written by Robert 
Shiels and other hack-writers under Cibber's editorship. 



ON THE LONDON STAGE 33 

his original connection with the playhouse was as 
holder of the horses of visitors outside the doors. 
According to the same compiler, the story was related 
by D'Avenant to Betterton ; but Rowe, to whom 
Betterton communicated it, made no use of it. The 
two regular theatres of the time were both reached on 
horseback by men of fashion, and the owner of The 
Theatre, James Burbage, kept a livery stable at 
Smithfield. There is no inherent improbability in the 
tale. Dr. Johnson's amplified version, in which Shake- 
speare was represented as organising a service of boys 
for the purpose of tending visitors' horses, sounds 
apocryphal. 

There is every indication that Shakespeare was 
speedily offered employment inside the playhouse. 
In 1587 the two chief companies of actors, claiming 
respectively the nominal patronage of the Queen and 
Lord Leicester, returned to London from a provincial 
tour, during which they visited Stratford. Two subor- 
dinate companies, one of which claimed the patronage 
of the Earl of Essex and the other that of Lord 
Stafford, also performed in the town during the same 
year. • Shakespeare's friends may have called the 
attention of the strolling players to the homeless lad, 
rumours of whose search for employment about the 
London theatres had doubtless reached Stratford. 
^ ]a From such incidents seems to have sprung 

house ser- the opportunity which offered Shakespeare 
fame and fortune. According to Rowe's 
vague statement, ' he was received into the com- 
pany then in being at first in a very mean rank.' 



34 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

William Castle, the parish clerk of Stratford at the 
end of the seventeenth century, was in the habit of 
telling visitors that he entered the playhouse as a 
servitor. Malone recorded in 1780 a stage tradition 
'that his first office in the theatre was that of 
prompter's attendant,' or call-boy. His intellectual 
capacity and the amiability with which he turned 
to account his versatile powers were probably soon 
recognised, and thenceforth his promotion was 
assured. 

Shakespeare's earliest reputation was made as an 
actor, and, although his work as a dramatist soon 
The acting eclipsed his histrionic fame, he remained a 
companies, prominent member of the actor's profession 
till near the end of his life. By an Act of Parlia- 
ment of 1 571 (14 Eliz. cap. 2), which was re-enacted 
in 1596 (39 Eliz. cap. 4), players were under the 
necessity of procuring a license to pursue their 
calling from a peer of the realm or ' personage of 
higher degree ' ; otherwise they were adjudged to be 
of the status of rogues and vagabonds. The Queen 
herself and many Elizabethan peers were liberal in 
the exercise of their licensing powers, and few actors 
failed to secure a statutory license, which gave them a 
rank of respectability, and relieved them of all risk 
of identification with vagrants or ' sturdy beggars.' 
From an early period in Elizabeth's reign licensed 
actors were organised into permanent companies. In 
1587 and following years, besides three companies 
of duly licensed boy-actors that were formed from 
the choristers of St. Paul's Cathedral and the Chapel 



ON THE LONDON STAGE 35 

Royal and from Westminster scholars, there were 
in London at least six companies of fully licensed 
adult actors ; five of these were called after the noble- 
men to whom their members respectively owed their 
licenses (viz. the Earls of Leicester, Oxford, Sussex, 
and Worcester, and the Lord Admiral, Charles, lord 
Howard of Effingham), and one of them whose actors 
derived their license from the Queen was called the 
Queen's Company. 

The patron's functions in relation to the companies 
seem to have been mainly confined to the grant 
or renewal of the actors' licenses. Constant altera- 
tions of name, owing to the death or change from 
other causes of the patrons, render it difficult to 
trace with certainty each company's history. But 
there seems no doubt that the most influential of 
the companies named — that under the nominal 
patronage of the Earl of Leicester — passed on his 
death in September 1588 to the patronage of 
Ferdinando Stanley, lord Strange, who became Earl 
of Derby on September 25, 1592. When the Earl of 
Derby died on April- 16, 1594, his place as patron and 
licenser was successively filled by Henry Carey, first 
The Lord lord Hunsdon, Lord Chamberlain {d. July 23, 

kdn™ ber ~ J 59 6 )' and b y his son and heir ' Ge0I "g e 
company. Carey, second lord Hunsdon, who himself 

became Lord Chamberlain in March 1 597. After 
King James's succession in May 1603 the company 
was promoted to be the King's players, and, thus ad- 
vanced in dignity, it fully maintained the supremacy 



36 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

which, under its successive titles, it had already long 
enjoyed. 

It is fair to infer that this was the company 
that Shakespeare originally joined and adhered to 
through life. Documentary evidence proves that he 
was a member of it in December 1594; in May 
a member 1603 he was one of its leaders. Four 
Chamber^ °^ * ts c ^' lQ ^ members — Richard Burbage, 
Iain's. the greatest tragic actor of the day, John 

Heming, Henry Condell, and Augustine Phillips 
— were among Shakespeare's lifelong friends. Under 
this company's auspices, moreover, Shakespeare's 
plays first saw the light. Only two of the plays 
claimed for him — ' Titus Andronicus' and ' 3 Henry 
VI ' — seem to have been performed by other com- 
panies (the Earl of Sussex's men in the one case, and 
the Earl of Pembroke's in the other). 

When Shakespeare became a member of the com- 
pany it was doubtless performing at The Theatre, the 
playhouse in Shoreditch which James Burbage, the 
father of the great actor, Richard Burbage, had con- 
structed in 1 576 ; it abutted on the Finsbury Fields, and 
stood outside the City's boundaries. The only other 
London playhouse then in existence — the Curtain 
in Moorfields — was near at hand ; its name survives 
in Curtain Road, Shoreditch. But at an early date 
The Lon- * n n * s actni g career Shakespeare's company 
don sought and found new quarters. While 

known as Lord Strange's men, they opened 
on February 19, 1592, a third London theatre, called 
the Rose, which Philip Henslowe, the speculative 



ON THE LONDON STAGE 37 

theatrical manager, had erected on the Bankside, 
Southwark. At the date of the inauguration of the 
Rose Theatre Shakespeare's company was temporarily 
allied with another company, the Admiral's men, who 
numbered the great actor Edward Alleyn among them. 
Alleyn for a few months undertook the direction of 
the amalgamated companies, but they quickly parted, 
and no further opportunity was offered Shakespeare of 
enjoying professional relations with Alleyn. The Rose 
Theatre was doubtless the earliest scene of Shake- 
speare's pronounced successes alike as actor and 
dramatist. Subsequently for a short time in 1594 he 
frequented the stage of another new theatre at New- 
ington Butts, and between 1595 and 1599 the older 
stages of the Curtain and of The Theatre in Shore- 
ditch. The Curtain remained open till the Civil 
Wars, although its vogue after 1600 was eclipsed 
by that of younger rivals. In 1599 Richard Burbage 
and his brother Cuthbert demolished the old build- 
ing of The Theatre and built, mainly out of the 
materials of the dismantled fabric, the famous theatre 
called the Globe on the Bankside. It was octagonal 
in shape, and built of wood, and doubtless Shake- 
speare described it (rather than the Curtain) as ' this 
wooden O ' in the opening chorus of ' Henry V ' 
(1. 13). After 1599 the Globe was mainly occupied 
by Shakespeare's company, and in its profits he 
acquired an important share. From the date of its 
inauguration until the poet's retirement, the Globe — 
which quickly won the first place among London 
theatres — seems to have been the sole playhouse with 



38 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

which Shakespeare was professionally associated. The 
equally familiar Blackfriars Theatre, which was created 
out of a dwelling-house by James Burbage, the actor's 
father, at the end of 1 596, was for many years after- 
wards leased out to the company of boy-actors known 
as ' the Queen's Children of the Chapel ' ; it was not 
occupied by Shakespeare's company until December 
1609 or January 16 10, when his acting days were 
nearing their end. 1 

In London Shakespeare resided near the theatres. 
According to a memorandum by Alleyn (which 
Place of Malone quoted), he lodged in 1596 near 
residence ' the Bear Garden in Southwark.' In 1598 
one William Shakespeare, who was assessed 
by the collectors of a subsidy in the sum of 13^. /\.d. 
upon goods valued at 5/., was a resident in St. Helen's 
parish, Bishopsgate, but it is not certain that this tax- 
payer was the dramatist. 2 

The chief differences between the methods of 
theatrical representation in Shakespeare's day and 
our own lay in the facts that neither scenery nor 
scenic costume nor women-actors were known to 
the Elizabethan stage. All female roles were, until 
the Restoration in 1660, assumed in the public 
theatres by men or boys. 3 Consequently the skill 
needed to rouse in the audience the requisite illusions 

1 The site of the Blackfriars Theatre is now occupied by the offices 
of the Times newspaper in Victoria Street, London, E.C. 

2 Cf. Exchequer Lay Subsidies City of London, 146/369, Public 
Record Office ; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. viii. 418. 

3 Shakespeare alludes to the appearance of men or boys in women's 
parts when he makes Rosalind say laughingly to the men of the audience 
in the epilogue to As You Like Lt, 'Lf L were a woman, I would kiss 



ON THE LONDON STAGE 39 

was far greater then than at later periods. But the 
professional customs of Elizabethan actors approxi- 
mated in other respects more closely to those of their 
modern successors than is usually recognised. The 
practice of touring in the provinces was followed with 
even greater regularity then than now. Few companies 

as many,' &c. Similarly, Cleopatra on her downfall in Antony and 

Cleopatra, V. ii. 220 seq., laments : 

the quick comedians 
Extemporally will stage us . . . and I shall see 
Some squeaking Cleopatra boy my greatness. 

Men taking women's parts seem to have worn masks. Flute is bidden 
by Quince play Thisbe ' in a mask ' in Midsummer Night's Dream 
(1. ii. 53). In French and Italian theatres of the time women seem to 
have acted publicly, but until the Restoration public opinion in England 
deemed the appearance of a woman on a public stage to be an act of 
shamelessness on which the most disreputable of her sex would hardly 
venture. With a curious inconsistency ladies of rank were encouraged at 
Queen Elizabeth's Court, and still more frequently at the Courts of James 
I and Charles I, to take part in private and amateur representations of 
masques and short dramatic pageants. During the reign of James I 
scenic decoration, usually designed by Inigo Jones, accompanied the 
production of masques in the royal palaces, but until the Restoration 
the public stages were bare of any scenic contrivance except a front 
curtain opening in the middle and a balcony or upper platform resting 
on pillars at the back of the stage, from which portions of the dialogue 
were "sometimes spoken, although occasionally the balcony seems to 
have been occupied by spectators (cf. a sketch made by a Dutch visitor 
to London in 1596 of the stage of the Swan Theatre in Zur Kenntniss 
der altenglischen Biihne von Karl Theodor Gaedertz. Mit der ersten 
anthentischen innem Ansicht der Sckwans Theatre in London, Bremen 
1888). Sir Philip Sidney humorously described the spectator's diffi- 
culties in an Elizabethan playhouse, where, owing to the absence of 
stage scenery, he had to imagine the bare boards to present in rapid 
succession a garden, a rocky coast, a cave, and a battlefield {Apologie 
for Poetrie, p. 52). Three flourishes on a trumpet announced the 
beginning of the performance, but a band of fiddlers played music 
between the acts. The scenes of each act were played without inter- 
ruption. 



40 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

remained in London during the summer or early- 
autumn, and every country town with two thousand 
or more inhabitants could reckon on at least one visit 
from travelling actors between May and October. A 
rapid examination of the extant archives of some 
seventy municipalities selected at random shows that 
Shakespeare's company between 1594 and 1614 fre- 
quently performed in such towns as Barnstaple, Bath, 
Bristol, Coventry, Dover, Faversham, Folkestone, 
Hythe, Leicester, Maidstone, Marlborough, New 
Romney, Oxford, Rye in Sussex, Saffron Walden, 
shake- and Shrewsbury. 1 Shakespeare may be 
alleged 5 credited with faithfully fulfilling all his pro- 
travels, f essional functions, and some of the references 
to travel in his sonnets were doubtless reminiscences 
of early acting tours. It has been repeatedly urged, 
moreover, that Shakespeare's company visited Scot- 
land, and that he went with it. 2 In November 1599 

1 Cf. Halliwell-Phillipps's Visits of Shakespeare's Company of Ac- 
tors to the Provincial Cities and Towns of England (privately printed, 
1887). From the information there given, occasionally supplemented 
from other sources, the following imperfect itinerary is deduced : 

1593. Bristol and Shrewsbury. 1607. Oxford. 

1594. Marlborough. 1608. Coventry and Marlborough. 
1597. Faversham, Bath, Rye, Bristol, 1609. Hythe, New Romney, and 

Dover, and Marlborough. Shrewsbury. 

1 603. Richmond (Surrey), Bath, 1610. Dover, Oxford, and Shrews- 

Coventry, Shrewsbury, Mort- bury. 

lake, Wilton House. 1612. New Romney. 

1604. Oxford. 1613. Folkestone, Oxford, and Shrews- 

1605. Barnstaple and Oxford. bury. 

1606. Leicester, Saffron Walden, 1614. Coventry. 

Marlborough, Oxford, Dover, 
and Maidstone. 

2 Cf. Knight's Life of Shakespeare (1843), p. 41; Fleay, Stage, pp. 
135-6. 



ON THE LONDON STAGE 4 1 

English actors arrived in Scotland under the leader- 
in Scot- ship of Lawrence Fletcher and one Martin, 
land. anc | were welcomed with enthusiasm by 

the king. 1 Fletcher was a colleague of Shake- 
speare in 1603, but is not known to have been one 
earlier. Shakespeare's company never included an 
actor named Martin. Fletcher repeated the visit in 
October 1601. 2 There is nothing to indicate that any 
of his companions belonged to Shakespeare's company. 
In like manner, Shakespeare's accurate reference in 
* Macbeth ' to the 'nimble' but 'sweet' climate of 
Inverness, 3 and the vivid impression he conveys of 

1 The favour bestowed by James VI on these English actors was 
so marked as to excite the resentment of the leaders of the Kirk. The 
English agent, George Nicolson, in a (hitherto unpublished) despatch 
dated from Edinburgh on November 12, 1599, wrote : 'The four Ses- 
sions of this Town (without touch by name of our English players, 
Fletcher and Mertyn [i.e. Martyn], with their company), and not 
knowing the King's ordinances for them to play and be heard, enacted 
[that] their flocks [were] to forbear and not to come to or haunt profane 
games, sports, or plays.' Thereupon the King summoned the Sessions 
before him in Council and threatened them with the full rigour of the 
law. Obdurate at first, the ministers subsequently agreed to moderate 
their -hostile references to the actors. Finally, Nicolson adds, ' the 
King this day by proclamation with sound of trumpet hath commanded 
the players liberty to play, and forbidden their hinder or impeach- 
ment therein.' MS. State Papers, Dom. Scotland, P. R. O. vol. lxv. 
No. 64. 

2 Fleay, Stage, pp. 126-44. 

3 Cf. Duncan's speech (on arriving at Macbeth's castle of Inverness) : 

This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air 
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 
Unto our gentle senses. 

Banquo. This guest of summer, 

The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, 
By his lov'd mansionry, that the heaven's breath 
Smells wooingly here. {Macbeth I. vi. 1-6.) 



42 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

the aspects of wild Highland heaths, have been judged 
to be the certain fruits of a personal experience ; but 
the passages in question, into which a more definite 
significance has possibly been read than Shakespeare 
intended, can be satisfactorily accounted for by Shake- 
speare's inevitable intercourse with Scotsmen in 
London and the theatres after James I's accession. 

A few English actors in Shakespeare's day occa- 
sionally combined to make professional tours through 
foreign lands, where Court society invariably gave 
them an hospitable reception. In Denmark, Germany, 
Austria, Holland, and in France, many dramatic 
performances were given before royal audiences by 
English actors between 1580 and 1630. 1 That Shake- 
speare joined any of these expeditions is highly im- 
probable. Actors of small account at home mainly 
took part in them, and Shakespeare's name appears in 
no extant list of those who paid professional visits 
abroad. It is, in fact, unlikely that Shakespeare ever 
set foot on the continent of Europe in either a private 
or professional capacity. He repeatedly ridicules 

the craze for foreign travel. 2 To Italy, it 
imtaiy. . -, • f, . • r ^t ; 

is true, and especially to cities of .Northern 

Italy, like Venice, Padua, Verona, Mantua, and 

Milan, he makes frequent and familiar reference, and 

1 Cf. Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany, 1 865; Meissner, Die englis- 
chen Comodianten zur Zeit Shakespeare in Oestereich, Vienna, 1884; 
Jon Stefansson on ' Shakespeare at Elsinore ' in Contemporaiy Reviezv, 
January 1896; A T otes and Queries, 5 th ser. ix. 43, and xi. 520; and M. 
Jusserand's article in the Nineteenth Century, April 1898, on English 
actors in France. 

2 Cf. As You Like It, iv. i. 22-40. 



ON THE LONDON STAGE 43 

he supplied many a realistic portrayal of Italian life 
and sentiment. But the fact that he represents 
Valentine in the 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' (1. i. 
71) as travelling from Verona to Milan by sea, 
and Prospero in ' The Tempest ' as embarking on a 
ship at the gates of Milan (1. ii. 129-44), renders it 
almost impossible that he could have gathered his 
knowledge of Northern Italy from personal ob- 
servation. 1 He doubtless owed all to the verbal 
reports of travelled friends or to books, the contents 
of which he had a rare power of assimilating and 
vitalising. 

The publisher Chettle wrote in 1 592 that Shake- 
speare was ' exelent in the qualitie 2 he professes,' and 
the old actor William Beeston asserted in the next 
century that Shakespeare ' did act exceedingly well.' 3 
shake- ^ u ^ ^ e r ^ es m which he distinguished 
speare's himself are imperfectly recorded. Few sur- 
viving documents refer directly to perfor- 
mances by him. At Christmas 1594 he joined the 
popular actors William Kemp, the chief comedian of 
the. day, and Richard Burbage, the greatest tragic 
actor, in ' two several comedies or interludes ' which 
were acted on St. Stephen's Day and on Innocents' 
Day (December 27 and 28) at Greenwich Palace 
before the Queen. The players received 'xiii/z. v]s. 
viiid. and by waye of her Majesties rewarde \ili. 

1 Cf. Elze, Essays, 1874, pp. 254 seq. 

2 ' Quality ' in Elizabethan English was the technical term for the 
' actor's profession.' 

3 Aubrey's Lives, ed. Andrew Clark, ii. 226. 



44 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

xiiis. iiij^., in all xx/z.' 1 Neither plays nor parts are 
named. Shakespeare's name stands first on the list 
of those who took part in the original performances 
of Ben Jonson's ' Every Man in his Humour' (1598). 
In the original edition of Jonson's ' Sejanus' (1603) 
the actors' names are arranged in two columns, and 
Shakespeare's name heads the second column, stand- 
ing parallel with Burbage's, which heads the first. 
But here again the character allotted to each actor is 
not stated. Rowe identified only one of Shakespeare's 
parts, * the Ghost in his own " Hamlet," ' and Rowe 
asserted his assumption of that character to be 'the 
top of his performance.' John Davies of Hereford 
noted that he 'played some kingly parts in sport.' 2 
One of Shakespeare's younger brothers, presumably 
Gilbert, often came, wrote Oldys, to London in his 
younger days to see his brother act in his own plays ; 
and in his old age, when his memory was failing, 
he recalled his brother's performance of Adam in 
' As You Like It.' In the 1623 folio edition of Shake- 
speare's ' Works ' his name heads the prefatory list 
'of the principall actors in all these playes.' 

That Shakespeare chafed under some of the 
conditions of the actor's calling is commonly inferred 
Alleged from the 'Sonnets.' There he reproaches 
actor's°ca^ himself witn becoming ' a motley to the view ' 
ing. (ex. 2), and chides fortune for having pro- 

vided for his livelihood nothing better than 'public 

1 Hallivvell-Phillipps, i. 121 ; Mrs. Stopes mjahrbuch der deutschen 
Shakespeare- Gesellschaft, 1896, xxxii. 182 seq. 

2 Scourge of Folly, 1610, epigr. 159. 



ON THE LONDON STAGE 45 

means that public manners breed,' whence his name 
received a brand (cxi. 4-5). If such self-pity is to 
be literally interpreted, it only reflected an evanescent 
mood. His interest in all that touched the efficiency of 
his profession was permanently active. He was a keen 
critic of actors' elocution, and in ' Hamlet ' shrewdly 
denounced their common failings, but clearly and 
hopefully pointed out the road to improvement. His 
highest ambitions lay, it is true, elsewhere than in 
acting, and at an early period of his theatrical career 
he undertook, with triumphant success, the labours of 
a playwright. But he pursued the profession of an 
actor loyally and uninterruptedly until he resigned 
all connection with the theatre within a few years of 
his death. 



46 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 

The whole of Shakespeare's dramatic work was pro- 
bably begun and ended within two decades (1591- 
Dramatic 1 6 1 1 ), between his twenty-seventh and forty- 
work, seventh year. If the works traditionally 
assigned to him include some contributions from 
other pens, he was perhaps responsible, on the other 
hand, for portions of a few plays that are traditionally 
claimed for others. When the account is balanced, 
Shakespeare must be credited with the production 
during these twenty years, of a yearly average of 
two plays, nearly all of which belong to the supreme 
rank of literature. Three volumes of poems must be 
added to the total. Ben Jonson was often told by the 
players that ' whatsoever he penned he never blotted 
out (i.e. erased) a line.' The editors of the First Folio 
attested that ' what he thought he uttered with that 
easinesse that we have scarce received from him a 
blot in his papers.' Signs of hasty workmanship are 
not lacking, but they are few when it is considered 
how rapidly his numerous compositions came from 
his pen, and they are in the aggregate unimportant. 

By borrowing his plots he to some extent econo- 
mised his energy, but he transformed most of them, 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 47 

and it was not probably with the object of conserv- 
es bor- ing his strength that he systematically 
rowed levied loans on popular current literature like 
plots. Holinshed's 'Chronicles,' North's translation 

of ' Plutarch,' widely read romances, and successful 
plays. In this regard he betrayed something of the 
practical temperament which is traceable in the 
conduct of the affairs of his later life. It was doubt- 
less with the calculated aim of ministering to the 
public taste that he unceasingly adapted, as his 
genius dictated, themes which had already, in the 
hands of inferior writers or dramatists, proved capa- 
ble of arresting public attention. 

The professional playwrights sold their plays out- 
right to one or other of the acting companies, and they 
The revi- retained no legal interest in them after the 
sionof manuscript had passed into the hands of the 
p ays " theatrical manager. 1 It was not unusual for 

the manager to invite extensive revision of a play at 
the hands of others than its author before it was pro- 
duced on the stage, and again whenever it was revived. 
Shakespeare gained his earliest experience as a dra- 
matist by revising or rewriting behind the scenes plays 
that had become the property of his manager. It is 
possible that some of his labours in this direction 

1 One of the many crimes laid to the charge of the dramatist 
Robert Greene was that of fraudulently disposing of the same play to 
two companies. '. Ask the Queen's players,' his accuser bade him in 
Cuthbert Cony-Catcher's Defence of Cony- Catching, 1592, 'if you 
sold them not Orlando Furioso for twenty nobles [i.e. about 7/.], 
and when they were in the country sold the same play to the Lord 
Admiral's men for as many more.' 



48 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

remain unidentified. In a few cases his alterations 
were slight, but as a rule his fund of originality was 
too abundant to restrict him, when working as an 
adapter, to mere recension, and the results of most 
of his labours in that capacity are entitled to rank 
among original compositions. 

The determination of the exact order in which 
Shakespeare's plays were written depends largely on 
Chrono- conjecture. External evidence is accessible 
logy of the in only a few cases, and, although always 
worthy of the utmost consideration, is not 
invariably conclusive. The date of publication rarely 
indicates the date of composition. Only sixteen of 
the thirty-seven plays commonly assigned to Shake- 
speare were published in his lifetime, and it is question- 
able whether any were published under his super- 
vision. 1 But subject-matter and metre both afford 
rough clues to the period in his career to which each 

1 The playhouse authorities deprecated the publishing of plays in 
the belief that their dissemination in print was injurious to the 
receipts of the theatre. A very small proportion of plays acted in 
Elizabeth's and James I's reign consequently reached the printing press, 
and most of them are now lost. But in the absence of any law of copy- 
right publishers often defied the wishes of the owner of manuscripts. 
Many copies of a popular play were made for the actors, and if one 
of these copies chanced to fall into a publisher's hands, it was 
habitually issued without any endeavour to obtain either author's or 
manager's sanction. In March 1599 the theatrical manager Philip 
Henslowe endeavoured to induce a publisher who had secured a play- 
house copy of the comedy of Patient Grissell by Dekker, Chettle, and 
Haughton to abandon the publication of it by offering him a bribe of 2/. 
The publication was suspended till 1603 (cf. Henslowe's Diary, p. 167). 
As late as 1633 Thomas Heywood wrote of 'some actors who think it 
against their peculiar profit to have them [i.e. plays] come into print.' 
{English Traveller, pref.) 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 49 

play may be referred. In his early plays the spirit 
of comedy or tragedy appears in its simplicity ; as 
his powers gradually matured he depicted life in 
its most complex involutions, and portrayed with 
masterly insight the subtle gradations of human 
sentiment and the mysterious workings of human 
passion. Comedy and tragedy are gradually blended ; 
and his work finally developed a pathos such as 
could only come of ripe experience. Similarly the 
metre undergoes emancipation from the hampering 
restraints of fixed rule and becomes flexible enough 
to respond to every phase of human feeling. In 
Metrical the blank verse of the early plays a pause 
tests. j s strictly observed at the close of each 

line, and rhyming couplets are frequent. Gradually 
the poet overrides such artificial restrictions ; rhyme 
largely disappears ; recourse is more frequently made 
to prose ; the pause is varied indefinitely ; extra syl- 
lables are, contrary to strict metrical law, introduced 
at the end of lines, and at times in the middle; the last 
word of the line is often a weak and unemphatic con- 
junction or preposition. 1 To the latest plays fantastic 
and punning conceits which abound in early work are 
rarely accorded admission. But, while Shakespeare's 

1 W. S. Walker in his Shakespeare's Versification, 1854, and Charles 
Bathurst in his Difference in Shakespeare 's Versification at Different 
Periods of his Life, 1857, were the first to point out the general 
facts. Dr. Ingram's paper on ' The Weak Endings ' in New Shakspere 
Society s Transactions (1874), vol. i., is of great value. Mr. Fleay's 
metrical tables, which first appeared in the same society's Transac- 
tions (1874), and have been reissued by Dr. Furnivall in a somewhat 
revised form in his introduction to Gervinus's Commentaries and in his 
Leopold Shakspere, give all the information possible. 



50 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

achievement from the beginning to the end of his 
career offers clearer evidence than that of any other 
writer of genius of the steady and orderly growth 
of his poetic faculty, some allowance must be made 
for ebb and flow in the current of his artistic progress. 
Early work occasionally anticipates features that be- 
come habitual to late work, and late work at times 
embodies traits that are mainly identified with early 
work. No exclusive reliance in determining the pre- 
cise chronology can be placed on the merely mechani- 
cal tests afforded by tables of metrical statistics. The 
chronological order can only be deduced with any 
confidence from a consideration of all the internal 
characteristics as well as the known external history 
of each play. The premisses are often vague and 
conflicting, and no chronology hitherto suggested re- 
ceives at all points universal assent. 

There is no external evidence to prove that any 
piece in which Shakespeare had a hand was produced 
before the spring of 1592. No play by him was pub- 
lished before 1597, and none bore his name on the title- 
page till 1 598. But his first essays have been with con- 
fidence allotted to 1 591 . To 'Love's Labour's Lost' 
, Love>s may reasonably be assigned priority in point 
Labour's of time of all Shakespeare's dramatic produc- 
tions. Internal evidence alone indicates the 
date of composition, and proves that it was an early 
effort ; but the subject-matter suggests that its author 
had already enjoyed extended opportunities of survey- 
ing London life and manners, such as were hardly open 
to him in the very first years of his settlement in the 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 51 

metropolis. ' Love's Labour's Lost ' embodies keen 
observation of contemporary life in many ranks of 
society, both in town and country, while the speeches 
of the hero Biron clothe much sound philosophy in 
masterly rhetoric. Its slender plot stands almost alone 
among Shakespeare's plots in that it is not known to 
have been borrowed, and stands quite alone in openly 
travestying known traits and incidents of current so- 
cial and political life. The names of the chief char- 
acters are drawn from the leaders in the civil war 
in France, which was in progress between 1589 and 
1594, and was anxiously watched by the English 
public. 1 Contemporary projects of academies for dis- 

1 The hero is the King of Navarre, in whose dominions the scene 
is laid. The two chief lords in attendance on him in the play, Biron 
and Longaville, bear the actual names of the two most strenuous sup- 
porters of the real King of Navarre (Biron's later career subsequently 
formed the subject of two plays by Chapman, The Conspiracie of Duke 
Biron and The Tragedy of Biron, which were both produced in 1605). 
The name of the Lord Dumain in Love's Labour's Lost is a common 
Anglicised version of that Due de Maine or Mayenne whose name was so 
frequently mentioned in popular accounts of French affairs in connection 
with Navarre's movements that Shakespeare was led to number him also 
among his supporters. Mothe or La Mothe, the name of the pretty, 
ingenious page, was that of a French ambassador who was long pop- 
ular in London; and, though he left England in 1583, he lived in the 
memory of playgoers and playwrights long after Love's Labour's Lost was 
written. In Chapman's An Humourous Day's Mirth, 1599, M. Le Mot, 
a sprightly courtier in attendance on the King of France, is drawn 
from the same original, and his name, as in Shakespeare's play, sug- 
gests much punning on the word 'mote.' As late as 1602 Middleton, 
in his Blurt, Master Constable, act ii. sc. ii. 1. 215, wrote: 

Ho God! Ho God! thus did I revel it 
When Monsieur Motte lay here ambassador. 

Armado, ' the fantastical Spaniard ' who haunts Navarre's Court, and 
is dubbed by another courtier 'a phantasm, a Monarcho,' is a caricature 



52 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ciplining young men ; fashions of speech and dress 
current in fashionable circles ; recent attempts on the 
part of Elizabeth's government to negotiate with the 
Tsar of Russia; the inefficiency of rural constables 
and the pedantry of village schoolmasters and curates 
are all satirised with good humour. The play was 
revised in 1597, probably for a performance at Court. 
It was first published next year, and on the title-page, 
which described the piece as ' newly corrected and 
augmented,' Shakespeare's name first appeared in 
print as that of author of a play. 

Less gaiety characterised another comedy of the 

same date, 'The Two Gentlemen of Verona,' which 

<Two dramatises a romantic story of love and 

Gentlemen friendship. There is every likelihood that 

it was an adaptation — amounting to a re- 

of a half-crazed Spaniard known as 'fantastical Monarcho ' who for 
many years hung about Elizabeth's Court, and was under the delusion 
that he owned the ships arriving in the port of London. On his death 
Thomas Churchyard wrote a poem called Fantasticall Monarcho 's Epi- 
taph, and mention is made of him in Reginald Scott's Discoverie of 
Witchcraft, 1584, p. 54. The name Armado was doubtless suggested 
by the expedition of 1588. Braggardino in Chapman's Blind Beggar 
of Alexandria, 1598, is drawn on the same lines. The scene {Love's 
Labour's Lost, v. ii. 158 seq.) in which the princess's lovers press their 
suit in the disguise of Russians follows a description of the reception by 
ladies of Elizabeth's Court in 1584 of Russian ambassadors who came 
to London to seek a wife among the ladies of the English nobility for 
the Tsar (cf. Horsey 's Travels, ed. E. A. Bond, Hakluyt Soc). For 
further indications of topics of the day treated in the play, see 'A 
New Study of " Love's Labour's Lost," ' by the present writer in Gent. 
Mag., Oct. 1880; and Transactions of the New Shakspere Society, pt. 
Hi. p. 80*. The attempt to detect in the schoolmaster Holofernes a 
caricature of the Italian teacher and lexicographer, John Florio, seems 
unjustified (see p. 85 n.). 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 53 

formation — of a lost 'History of Felix and Philo- 
mena,' which had been acted at Court in 1584. The 
story is the same as that of ' The Shepardess Felis- 
mena ' in the Spanish pastoral romance of ' Diana ' by 
George de Montemayor, which long enjoyed popular- 
ity in England. No complete English translation of 
' Diana ' was published before that of Bartholomew 
Yonge in 1598, but a manuscript version by Thomas 
Wilson, which was dedicated to the Earl of Southamp- 
ton in 1596, was possibly circulated far earlier. Some 
verses from ' Diana ' were translated by Sir Philip Sid- 
ney and were printed with his poems as early as 1591. 
Barnabe Rich's story of ' Apollonius and Silla ' (from 
Cinthio's ' Hecatommithi '), which Shakespeare em- 
ployed again in 'Twelfth Night,' also gave him some 
hints. Trifling and irritating conceits abound in the 
'Two Gentlemen,' but passages of high poetic spirit 
are not wanting, and the speeches of the clowns, 
Launce and Speed, — the precursors of a long line of 
whimsical serving-men, — overflow with farcical drol- 
lery. The ' Two Gentlemen ' was not published in 
Shakespeare's lifetime ; it first appeared in the folio 
of 1623, after having, in all probability, undergone 
some revision. 1 

Shakespeare next tried his hand, in the ' Comedy 
of Errors ' (commonly known at the time as ' Errors '), 
'Comedy at boisterous farce. It also was first pub- 
of Errors.' Kshed in 1623. Again, as in 'Love's Labour's 
Lost,' allusion was made to the civil war in France. 
France was described as making war against her heir 

1 Cf. Fleay, Life, pp. 188 seq. 



54 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

(act v. sc. ii. 1. 125). Shakespeare's farcical comedy 
may have been founded on a play, no longer extant, 
called 'The Historie of Error,' which was acted in 
1576 at Hampton Court. In subject-matter it resem- 
bles the ' Menaechmi ' of Plautus, and treats of mis- 
takes of identity arising from the likeness of twin-born 
children. The scene (act hi. sc. i.) in which Anti- 
pholus of Ephesus is shut out from his own house, 
while his brother and wife are at dinner within, 
recalls one in the ' Amphitruo ' of Plautus. Shake- 
speare doubtless had direct recourse to Plautus as 
well as to the old play, and he may have read 
Plautus in English. The earliest translation of the 
' Menaechmi ' was not licensed for publication before 
June 10, 1594, and was not published until the fol- 
lowing year. No translation of any other play of 
Plautus appeared before. But it was stated in the 
preface to this first published translation of the 
' Menaechmi ' that the translator, W.W., doubtless 
William Warner, a veteran of the Elizabethan world 
of letters, had some time previously ' Englished ' that 
and ' divers ' others of Plautus's comedies, and had 
circulated them in manuscript 'for the use of and 
delight of his private friends, who, in Plautus's own 
words, are not able to understand them.' 

Such plays as these, although each gave promise 
of a dramatic capacity out of the common way, can- 
not be with certainty pronounced to be beyond the 
ability of other men. It was in ' Romeo and Juliet,' 
Shakespeare's first tragedy, that he proved himself 
the possessor of a poetic and dramatic instinct of 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 55 

unprecedented quality. In ' Romeo and Juliet ' he 
turned to account a tragic romance of Italian origin, 1 
•Romeo which was already popular in English ver- 
and juhet.* s } ons Arthur Broke rendered it into 
English verse from the Italian of Bandello in 1562, 
and William Painter had published it in prose in 
his 'Palace of Pleasure' in 1567. Shakespeare made 
little change in the plot as drawn from Bandello by 
Broke, but he impregnated it with poetic fervour, 
and relieved the tragic intensity by developing the 
humour of Mercutio, and by grafting on the story 
the new comic character of the Nurse. 2 The ecstasy 
of youthful passion is portrayed by Shakespeare in 
language of the highest lyric beauty, and although a 
predilection for quibbles and conceits occasionally 
passes beyond the author's control, ' Romeo and Juliet,' 
as a tragic poem on the theme of love, has no rival in 
any literature. If the Nurse's remark, ' Tis since the 
earthquake now eleven years ' (1. hi. 23), be taken 
literally, the composition of the play must be referred 

1 The story, which has been traced back to the Greek romance 
of Anthia and Abroco?nas by Xenophon Ephesius, a writer of the 
second century, seems to have been first told in modern Europe about 
1470 by Masuccio in his Novellino (No. xxxiii. : cf. Mr. Waters's transla- 
tion, i. 155-65). It was adapted from Masuccio by Luigi da Porto 
in his novel, La Giuletta, 1535, and by Bandello in his Novelle, 1554, 
pt. ii. No. ix. Bandello's version became classical; Belleforest trans- 
lated it in his Histoires Tragiques, Lyons, 1564. At the same time as 
Shakespeare was writing Romeo and Juliet, Lope de Vega was 
dramatising the tale in his Spanish play called Casteliones y Montisis 
{i.e. Capulets and Montagus). For analysis of Lope's play, which 
ends happily, see Variorum Shakespeare, 1821, xxi. 451-60. 

2 Cf. Originals and Analogues, pt. i. ed. P. A. Daniel, New Shak- 
spere Society. 



56 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

to 1 59 1, for no earthquake in the sixteenth century 
was experienced in England after 1580. There are 
a few parallelisms with Daniel's ' Complainte of Rosa- 
mond,' published in 1592, and it is probable that 
Shakespeare completed the piece in that year. It was 
first printed anonymously and surreptitiously by John 
Danter in 1597 from an imperfect acting copy. A 
second quarto of 1599 (by T. Creede for Cuthbert 
Burbie) was printed from an authentic version, but 
the piece had probably undergone revision since its 
first production. 1 

Of the original representation on the stage of three 
other pieces of the period we have more explicit in- 
formation. These reveal Shakespeare undisguisedly 
as an adapter of plays by other hands. Though they 
lack the interest attaching to his unaided work, they 
throw invaluable light on some of his early methods 
of composition and his early relations with other 
dramatists. 

On March 3, 1592, a new piece, called 'Henry 
VI,' was acted at the Rose Theatre by Lord Strange's 
' Henry men. It was no doubt the play which was 
VI -' subsequently known as Shakespeare's ' The 

First Part of Henry VI.' On its first performance it 
won a popular triumph. 'How would it have joyed 
brave Talbot (the terror of the French),' wrote Nash 
in his 'Pierce Pennilesse' (1592, licensed August 8), 
in reference to the striking scenes of Talbot's death 
(act iv. sc. vi. and vii.), ' to thinke that after he had 

1 Cf. Parallel Texts, ed. P. A. Daniel, New Shakspere Society; 
Fleay, Life, pp. 191 seq. 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 57 

lyne two hundred yeares in his Tombe, hee should 
triumphe againe on the Stage, and have his bones newe 
embalmed with the teares of ten thousand spectators 
at least (at severall times) who, in the Tragedian that 
represents his person, imagine they behold him fresh 
bleeding ! ' There is no categorical record of the 
production of a second piece in continuation of the 
theme, but such a play quickly followed ; for a third 
piece, treating of the concluding incidents of Henry 
VI's reign, attracted much attention on the stage 
early in the following autumn. 

The applause attending the completion of this his- 
torical trilogy caused bewilderment in the theatrical 
profession. The older dramatists awoke to the fact that 
their popularity was endangered by the young stranger 
who had set up his tent in their midst, and one veteran 
uttered without delay a rancorous protest. Robert 
Greene, who died on September 3, 1592, wrote on his 
deathbed an ill-natured farewell to life, entitled ' A 
Greene's Groats-worth of Wit bought with a Million 
attack. f Repentance.' Addressing three brother 
dramatists — Marlowe, Nash, and Peele or Lodge — he 
bade them beware of puppets ' that speak from our 
mouths,' and of 'antics garnished in our colours.' 
' There is,' he continued, ' an upstart Crow, beautified 
with our feathers, that with his Tygers Jieart wrapt in 
a players hide supposes he is as well able to bumbast 
out a blanke verse as the best of you ; and being an 
absolute Johannes factotum is, in his owne conceit, the 
only Shake-scene in a countrie. . . . Never more 
acquaint [those apes] with your admired inventions, 



58 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

for it is pity men of such rare wits should be subject 
to the pleasures of such rude groomes.' The 'only 
Shake-scene ' is a punning denunciation of Shake- 
speare. The tirade was probably inspired by an 
established author's resentment at the energy of a 
young actor — the theatre's factotum — in revising 
the dramatic work of his seniors with such masterly 
effect as to imperil their hold on the esteem of 
manager and playgoer. The italicised quotation 
travesties a line from the third piece in the trilogy of 
Shakespeare's ' Henry VI ' : 

Oh Tiger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide. 

But Shakespeare's amiability of character and versatile 
ability had already won him admirers, and his suc- 
cesses excited the sympathetic regard of colleagues 
more kindly than Greene. In December 1 592 Greene's 
publisher, Henry Chettle, prefixed an apology for 
Chettie's Greene's attack on the young actor to his 
apology. t j£ mc [ Hartes Dreame,' a tract reflecting on 
phases of contemporary social life. ' I am as sory,' 
Chettle wrote, ' as if the originall fault had beene my 
fault, because myselfe have seene his [i.e. Shake- 
speare's] demeanour no lesse civill than he [is] exe- 
lent in the qualitie he professes, besides divers of 
worship have reported his uprightnes of dealing, 
which argues his honesty, and his facetious grace in 
writing that aprooves his art.' 

The first of the three plays dealing with the reign 
of Henry VI was originally published in the collected 
edition of Shakespeare's works ; the second and third 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 59 

plays were previously printed in a form very dif- 
Divided ferent from that which they subsequently 
a ^ h ° rshlp assumed when they followed the first part 
VI.' in the folio. Criticism has proved beyond 

doubt that in these plays Shakespeare did no more 
than add, revise, and correct other men's work. In 
'The First Part of Henry VI' the scene in the 
Temple Gardens, where white and red roses are 
plucked as emblems by the rival political parties (act 
ii. sc. iv.), the dying speech of Mortimer, and perhaps 
the wooing of Margaret by Suffolk, alone bear the 
impress of his style. A play dealing with the second 
part of Henry VI's reign was published anony- 
mously from a rough stage copy in 1594, with the 
title ' The first part of the Contention betwixt the 
two famous houses of Yorke and Lancaster.' A 
play dealing with the third part was published with 
greater care next year under the title ' The True 
Tragedie of Richard, Duke of Yorke, and the death 
of good King Henry the Sixt, as it was sundrie 
times acted by the Earl of Pembroke his servants.' 
In both these plays Shakespeare's revising hand can 
be traced. The humours of Jack Cade in ' The 
Contention ' can owe their savour to him alone. 
After he had hastily revised the original drafts of 
the three pieces, perhaps with another's aid, they 
were put on the stage in 1592, the first two parts 
by his own company (Lord Strange's men), and 
the third, under some exceptional arrangement, by 
Lord Pembroke's men. But Shakespeare was not 
content to leave them thus. Within a brief interval, 



60 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

possibly for a revival, he undertook a more thorough 
revision, still in conjunction with another writer. 
' The First Part of the Contention ' was thoroughly 
overhauled, and was converted into what was en- 
titled in the folio ' The Second Part of Henry VI ' ; 
there more than half the lines are new. ' The True 
Tragedie,' which became ' The Third Part of Henry 
VI,' was less drastically handled ; two-thirds of it 
was left practically untouched ; only a third was 
thoroughly remodelled. 1 

Who Shakespeare's coadjutors were in the two 
successive revisions of ' Henry VI,' is matter for con- 
Shake- jecture. The theory that Greene and Peele 
speare's produced the original draft of the three 
coadjutors. parts of , Henry VIj . which Shakespeare 

recast, may help to account for Greene's indignant 
denunciation of Shakespeare as ' an upstart crow, 
beautified with the feathers ' of himself and his 
fellow-dramatists. Much can be said, too, in behalf 
of the suggestion that Shakespeare joined Marlowe, 
the. greatest of his predecessors, in the first revision 
of which ' The Contention ' and the ' True Tragedie ' 
were the outcome. Most of the new passages in the 
second recension seem assignable to Shakespeare 
alone, but a few suggest a partnership resembling 
that of the first revision. It is probable that Marlowe 
began the final revision, but his task was interrupted 
by his death, and the lion's share of the work fell to 
his younger coadjutor. 

1 Cf. Fleay, Life, pp. 235 seq. ; Trans. New Shakspere Soc, 1876, 
pt. ii. by Miss Jane Lee; Swinburne, Study, pp. 51 seq. 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 6 1 

Shakespeare shared with other men of genius that 
receptivity of mind which impels them to assimilate 
much of the intellectual effort of their contemporaries 
and to transmute it in the process from unvalued ore 
into pure gold. Had Shakespeare not been profes- 
sionally employed in recasting old plays by contem- 
poraries, he would doubtless have shown in his 
writings traces of a study of their work. The verses 
of Thomas Watson, Samuel Daniel, Michael Drayton, 
Shake- Sir Philip Sidney, and Thomas Lodge were 
sfmtiative 5 " certainly among the rills which fed the 
power. mighty river of his poetic and lyric in- 
vention. Kyd and Greene, among rival writers of 
tragedy, left more or less definite impression on all 
Shakespeare's early efforts in tragedy. It was, how- 
ever, only to two of his fellow-dramatists that his 
indebtedness as a writer of either comedy or tragedy 
was material or emphatically defined. Superior as 
Shakespeare's powers were to those of Marlowe, his 
coadjutor in ' Henry VI,' his early tragedies often 
reveal him in the character of a faithful disciple of 
that vehement delineator of tragic passion. Shake- 
speare's early comedies disclose a like relationship 
between him and Lyly. 

Lyly is best known as the author of the affected 
romance of 'Euphues,' but between 1580 and 1592 
L 1 's in ^ e P r0( iuced eight trivial and insubstantial 
fluence in comedies, of which six were written in prose, 
one was in blank verse, and one was in rhyme. 
Much of the dialogue in Shakespeare's comedies, from 
' Love's Labour's Lost ' to ' Much Ado about Nothing,' 



62 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

consists in thrusting and parrying fantastic conceits, 
puns, or antitheses. This is the style of intercourse in 
which most of Lyly's characters exclusively indulge. 
Three-fourths of Lyly's comedies lightly revolve 
about topics of classical or fairy mythology — in the 
very manner which Shakespeare first brought to a 
triumphant issue in his ' Midsummer Night's Dream.' 
Shakespeare's treatment of eccentric character like 
Don Armado in ' Love's Labour's Lost ' and his boy 
Moth reads like a reminiscence of Lyly's portrayal of 
Sir Thopas, a fat vainglorious knight, and his boy 
Epiton in the comedy of ' Endymion,' while the watch- 
men in the same play clearly adumbrate Shake- 
speare's Dogberry and Verges. The device of mascu- 
line disguise for love-sick maidens was characteristic 
of Lyly's method before Shakespeare ventured on 
it for the first of many times in 'Two Gentlemen 
of Verona,' and the dispersal through Lyly's comedies 
of songs possessing every lyrical charm is not the 
least interesting of the many striking features which 
Shakespeare's achievements in comedy seem to 
borrow from Lyly's comparatively insignificant 
experiments. 1 

Marlowe, who alone of Shakespeare's contem- 
poraries can be credited with exerting on his efforts 

1 In later life Shakespeare, in Hamlet, borrows from Lyly's 
Euphues Polonius's advice to Laertes; but, however he may have 
regarded the moral sentiment of that didactic romance, he had no 
respect for the affectations of its prose style, which he ridiculed in 
a familiar passage in I Henry IV, II. iv. 445 : ' For though the 
camomile, the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth the 
more it is wasted, the sooner it wears.' 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 63 

in tragedy a really substantial influence, was in 
Marlowe's l S9 2 an d 1593 at the zenith of his fame, 
influence in Two of Shakespeare's earliest historical 
tragedy. tragedies < Ri cna rd III' and 'Richard II,' 
with the story of Shylock in his somewhat later 
comedy of the ' Merchant of Venice,' plainly disclose 
a conscious resolve to follow in Marlowe's footsteps. 
In ' Richard III ' Shakespeare, working singlehanded, 
takes up the history of England near the point at 
which Marlowe and he, apparently working in partner- 
ship, left it in the third part of ' Henry VI.' The 
subject was already familiar to dramatists, but 
Shakespeare sought his materials in the ' Chronicle ' 
of Holinshed. A Latin piece, by Dr. Thomas Legge, 
had been in favour with academic audiences since 1 579, 
■Richard and in 1 594 the 'True Tragedie of Richard 
IIL ' III ' from some other pen was published ano- 

nymously ; but Shakespeare's piece bears little resem- 
blance to either. Throughout Shakespeare's ' Richard 
III ' the effort to emulate Marlowe is undeniable. The 
tragedy is, says Mr. Swinburne, ' as fiery in passion, as 
single in purpose, as rhetorical often, though never so 
inflated in expression, as Marlowe's " Tamburlaine " 
itself.' The turbulent piece was naturally popular. 
Burbage's impersonation of the hero was one of his 
most effective performances, and his vigorous enun- 
ciation of ' A horse, a horse ! my kingdom for a 
horse ! ' gave the line proverbial currency. 

' Richard II ' seems to have followed ' Richard III ' 
without delay. Subsequently both were published 
anonymously in the same year (1597) as they had 



64 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

'been publikely acted by the right Honorable the 
Lorde Chamberlaine his servants ' ; but the de- 
position scene in ' Richard II,' which dealt with a 
topic distasteful to the Queen, was omitted from the 
'Richard early impressions. Prose is avoided through- 
IL " out the play, a certain sign of early work. 

The piece was probably composed very early in 
1593. Marlowe's tempestuous vein is less apparent in 
' Richard II ' than in < Richard III.' But if ' Richard II ' 
be in style and treatment less deeply indebted 
to Marlowe than its predecessor, it was clearly 
suggested by Marlowe's ' Edward II.' Throughout 
its exposition of the leading theme — the development 
and collapse of the weak king's character — Shake- 
speare's historical tragedy closely imitates Marlowe's. 
Shakespeare drew the facts from Holinshed, but his 
embellishments are numerous, and include the mag- 
nificently eloquent eulogy of England which is set in 
the mouth of John of Gaunt. 

In ' As You Like It ' (in. v. 80) Shakespeare 
parenthetically commemorated his acquaintance with, 
Acknow- and his general indebtedness to, the elder 
to d M^r- ntS dramatist by apostrophising him in the 
lowe. lines : 

Dead Shepherd ! now I find thy saw of might : 
' Who ever loved that loved not at first sight? ' 

The second line is a quotation from Marlowe's poem 
' Hero and Leander' (line 76). In the ' Merry Wives 
of Windsor' (in. i. 17-21) Shakespeare places in the 
mouth of Sir Hugh Evans snatches of verse from 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 65 

Marlowe's charming lyric, ' Come live with me and be 
my love.' 

Between February 1593 and the end of the year 
the London theatres were closed, owing to the pre- 
valence of the plague, and Shakespeare doubtless 
travelled with his company in the country. But his 
pen was busily employed, and before the close of 
1594 he gave marvellous proofs of his rapid powers 
of production. 

' Titus Andronicus ' was in his own lifetime 
claimed for Shakespeare, but Edward Ravenscroft, 
•Titus An- who prepared a new version in 1678, wrote 
dronicus." f it : 'I have been told by some anciently 
conversant with the stage that it was not originally 
his, but brought by a private author to be acted, and 
he only gave some master-touches to one or two 
of the principal parts or characters.' Ravenscroft's 
assertion deserves acceptance. The tragedy, a san- 
guinary picture of the decadence of Imperial Rome, 
contains powerful lines and situations, but is far too 
repulsive in plot and treatment, and too ostentatious 
in classical allusions, to take rank with Shakespeare's 
acknowledged work. Ben Jonson credits ' Titus 
Andronicus ' with a popularity equalling Kyd's 
' Spanish Tragedy,' and internal evidence shows that 
Kyd was capable of writing much of 'Titus.' It 
was suggested by a piece called ' Titus and Vespasian,' 
which Lord Strange's men played on April 11, 1592 j 1 
this is only extant in a German version acted by 
English players in Germany, and published in 
f 1 Henslowe, p. 24. 



66 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

1620. 1 ' Titus Andronicus' was obviously taken in hand 
soon after the production of ' Titus and Vespasian,' 
in order to exploit popular interest in the topic. It 
was acted by the Earl of Sussex's men on January 
2 3> J 593 - 4» when it was described as a new piece; 
but that it was also acted subsequently by Shake- 
speare's company is shown by the title-page of the 
first extant edition of 1600, which describes it as 
having been performed by the Earl of Derby's and 
the Lord Chamberlain's servants (successive titles of 
Shakespeare's company), as well as by those of the 
Earls of Pembroke and Sussex. It was entered on 
the ' Stationers' Register ' to John Danter on February 
6, 1 594- 2 Langbaine claims to have seen an edition 
of this date, but none earlier than that of 1600 is now 
known. 

For part of the plot of ' The Merchant of Venice,' 
in which two romantic love stories are skilfully 
blended with a theme of tragic import, Shakespeare 
had recourse to ' II Pecorone,' a fourteenth-century 
• Merchant collection of Italian novels by Ser Giovanni 
of Venice.' Florentine 3 There a Jewish creditor de- 
mands a pound of flesh of a defaulting Christian 
debtor, and the latter is rescued through the advo- 
cacy of ' the lady of Belmont,' who is wife of the 
debtor's friend. The management of the plot in the 

1 Cf. Cohn, Shakespeare in Germany, pp. 155 seq. 

2 Arber, ii. 644. 

3 Cf. W. G. Waters's translation of II Pecorone, pp. 44-60 (fourth 
day, novel 1). The collection was not published till 1558, and the 
story followed by Shakespeare was not accessible in his day in any 
language but the original Italian. 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 6/ 

Italian novel is closely followed by Shakespeare. 
A similar story is slenderly outlined in the popu- 
lar mediaeval collection of anecdotes called ' Gesta 
Romanorum,' while the tale of the caskets, which 
Shakespeare combined with it in the ' Merchant,' is told 
independently in another portion of the same work. 
But Shakespeare's ' Merchant ' owes much to other 
sources, including more than one old play. Stephen 
Gosson describes in his ' Schoole of Abuse' (1579) 
a lost play called ' the Jew . . . showne at the Bull 
[inn] . . . representing the greedinesse of worldly 
chusers and bloody mindes of usurers.' This descrip- 
tion suggests that the two stories of the pound of 
flesh and the caskets had been combined before 
for purposes of dramatic representation. The scenes 
in Shakespeare's play in which Antonio negotiates 
with Shylock are roughly anticipated, too, by 
dialogues between a Jewish creditor Gerontus and 
a Christian debtor in the extant play of ' The Three 
Ladies of London,' by R[obert] Wplson], 1584. 
There the Jew opens the attack on his Christian 
debtor with the lines : 

Signor Mercatore, why do you not pay me ? Think you I will be 
mocked in this sort ? 

This three times you have flouted me — it seems you make thereat a 
sport. 

Truly pay me my money, and that even now presently, 

Or by mighty Mahomet, I swear I will forthwith arrest thee. 

Subsequently, when the judge is passing judgment in 
favour of the debtor, the Jew interrupts : 

Stay, there, most puissant judge. Signor Mercatore, consider what 
you do. 

Pay me the principal, as for the interest I forgive it you. 



68 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Above all is it of interest to note that Shakespeare 
in ' The Merchant of Venice ' betrays the last defina- 
ble traces of his discipleship to Marlowe. Although 
the delicate comedy which lightens the serious interest 
Shyiock °f Shakespeare's play sets it in a wholly dif- 
and Rode- ferent category from that of Marlowe's ' Jew 
ngo opez. Q £ ^jgj ta ^ t j ie humanised portrait of the Jew 
Shyiock embodies distinct reminiscences of Marlowe's 
caricature of the Jew Barabbas. But Shakespeare 
soon outpaced his master, and the inspiration that 
he drew from Marlowe in the ' Merchant ' touches 
only the general conception of the central figure. 
Doubtless the popular interest aroused by the trial 
in February 1594 and the execution in June of the 
Queen's Jewish physician, Roderigo Lopez, incited 
Shakespeare to a new and subtler study of Jewish 
character. 1 For Shyiock (not the merchant Antonio) 

1 Lopez was the Earl of Leicester's physician before 1586, and the 
Queen's chief physician from that date. An accomplished linguist, with 
friends in all parts of Europe, he acted in 1590 at the request of the Earl 
of Essex as interpreter to Antonio Perez, a victim of Philip II's perse- 
cution, whom Essex and his associates brought to England in order to 
stimulate the hostility of the English public to Spain. Don Antonio (as 
the refugee was popularly called) proved querulous and exacting. A 
quarrel between Lopez and Essex followed. Spanish agents in London 
offered Lopez a bribe to poison Antonio and the Queen. The evidence 
that he assented to the murderous proposal is incomplete, but he was 
convicted of treason, and, although the Queen long delayed signing his 
death-warrant, he was hanged at Tyburn on June 7, 1594. His trial 
and execution evoked a marked display of anti-Semitism on the part 
of the London populace. Very few Jews were domiciled in England 
at the time. That a Christian named Antonio should be the cause of 
the ruin alike of the greatest Jew in Elizabethan England and of the 
greatest Jew of the Elizabethan drama is a curious confirmation of the 
theory that Lopez was the begetter of Shyiock. Cf. the article on 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 69 

is the hero of the play, and the main interest cul- 
minates in the Jew's trial and discomfiture. The 
bold transition from that solemn scene which 
trembles on the brink of tragedy to the gently 
poetic and humorous incidents of the concluding 
act attests a mastery of stagecraft ; but the in- 
terest, although it is sustained to the end, is, after 
Shylock's final exit, pitched in a lower key. The 
'Venesyon Comedy,' which Henslowe, the manager, 
produced at the Rose on August 25, 1594, was pro- 
bably the earliest version of ' The Merchant of Venice,' 
and it was revised later. It was not published till 
1600, when two editions appeared, each printed from 
a different stage copy. 

To 1594 must also be assigned 'King John,' 
which, like the ' Comedy of Errors ' and ' Richard II,' 
altogether eschews prose. The piece, which was not 
printed till 1623, was directly adapted from a worthless 
•King play called 'The Troublesome Raigne of 
John.' King John' (1 591), which was fraudulently 

reissued in 161 1 as ' written by W. Sh.,' and in 1622 as 
by ' W. Shakespeare.' There is very small ground for 
associating Marlowe's name with the old play. Into 
the adaptation Shakespeare flung all his energy, and 
the theme grew under his hand into genuine tragedy. 
The three chief characters — the mean and cruel king, 

Roderigo Lopez in the Dictionary of National Biography ; 'The 
Original of Shylock,' by the present writer, in Gent. Mag., February 
1880 ; Dr. H. Graetz, Shylock in den Sagen, in den Dramen und in 
der Geschichte, Krotoschin, 1880 ; New Shakspere Soc. Trans., 1887-92, 
pt. ii. 158-92; 'The Conspiracy of Dr. Lopez,' by the Rev. Arthur 
Dimock, in English Historical Review (1894), ix. 440 seq. 



yo WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

the noblehearted and desperately wronged Constance, 
and the soldierly humourist, Faulconbridge — are in all 
essentials of his own invention, and are portrayed 
with the same sureness of touch that marked in 
Shylock his rapidly maturing strength. The scene, in 
which the gentle boy Arthur learns from Hubert that 
the king has ordered his eyes to be put out, is as 
affecting as any passage in tragic literature. 

At the close of 1594 a performance of Shake- 
speare's early farce, 'The Comedy of Errors,' gave 
him a passing notoriety that he could well have 
spared. The piece was played on the evening of 
Innocents' Day (December 28), 1594, in the hall 
'Comedy of Gray's Inn, before a crowded audience 
o Eirors ^ kg^^g™ students, and their friends. 

in Gray s ' ' 

inn Hail. There was some disturbance during the 
evening on the part of guests from the Inner Temple, 
who, dissatisfied with the accommodation afforded 
them, retired in dudgeon. ' So that night,' the con- 
temporary chronicler states, 'was begun and con- 
tinued to the end in nothing but confusion and errors, 
whereupon it was ever afterwards called the " Night 
of Errors."' 1 Shakespeare was acting on the same 
day before the Queen at Greenwich, and it is doubtful 
if he were present. On the morrow a commission 
of oyer and terminer inquired into the causes of the 
tumult, which was attributed to a sorcerer having 
'foisted a company of base and common fellows to 

1 Gesia Grayorum, printed in 1688 from a contemporary manu- 
script. A second performance of the Comedy of Errors was given at 
Gray's Inn Hall by the Elizabethan Stage Society on Dec. 6, 1895. 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 7 1 

make up our disorders with a play of errors and con- 
fusions.' 

Two plays of uncertain authorship attracted public 
attention during the period under review (i 591-4) — 
' Arden of Feversham ' (licensed for publication April 3, 
1 592, and published in 1 592) and ' Edward III' (licensed 
for publication December 1, 1595, and published in 
1596). Shakespeare's hand has been traced in both, 
mainly on the ground that their dramatic energy is of 
a quality not to be discerned in the work of any 
contemporary whose writings are extant. There 
is no external evidence in favour of Shakespeare's 
authorship in either case. ' Arden of Feversham ' 
Early plays dramatises with intensity and insight a 
doubtfully sordid murder of a husband by a wife which 

assigned to . 

Shake- took place at raversnam in 1 55 1, and was 
speare. fully reported by Holinshed. The subject 
is of a different type from any which Shakespeare is 
known to have treated, and although the play may be, 
as Mr. Swinburne insists, ' a young man's work,' it 
bears no relation either in topic or style to the work 
on which young Shakespeare was engaged at a period 
so early as 1591 or 1592. ' Edward III ' is a play in 
Marlowe's vein, and has been assigned to Shakespeare 
on even more shadowy grounds. Capell reprinted it 
in his 'Prolusions' in 1760, and described it as 
' thought to be writ by Shakespeare.' Many speeches 
scattered through the drama, and one whole scene — ■ 
that in which the Countess of Salisbury repulses the 
advances of Edward III — show the hand of a master 
(act ii. sc. ii.). But there is even in the style of 



72 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

these contributions much to dissociate them from 
Shakespeare's acknowledged productions, and to 
justify their ascription to some less gifted disciple of 
Marlowe. 1 A line in act ii. sc. i. (' Lilies that fester 
smell far worse than weeds') reappears in Shake- 
speare's ' Sonnets ' (xciv. 1. 14). 2 It was contrary to 
his practice to literally plagiarise himself. The line 
in the play was doubtless borrowed from a manu- 
script copy of the * Sonnets.' 

Two other popular plays of the period, ' Muce- 
dorus,' and ' Faire Em,' have also been assigned to 
• Muce- Shakespeare on slighter provocation. In 
dorus.' Charles II's library they were bound to- 
gether in a volume labelled ' Shakespeare, Vol. I,' and 
bold speculators have occasionally sought to justify 
the misnomer. 

' Mucedorus,' an elementary effort in romantic 
comedy, dates from the early years of Elizabeth's 
reign; it was first published, doubtless after under- 
going revision, in 1595, and was reissued, 'amplified 
with new additions,' in 1610. Mr. Payne Collier, who 
included it in his privately printed edition of Shake- 
speare in 1878, was confident that a scene interpolated 
in the 16 10 version (in which the King of Valentia 
laments the supposed loss of his son) displayed 
genius which Shakespeare alone could compass. 
However readily critics may admit the superiority in 
literary value of the interpolated scene to anything 
else in the piece, few will accept Mr. Collier's ex- 
travagant estimate. The scene was probably from 

1 Cf. Swinburne, Study of Shakspere, pp. 231-74. 2 See p. 89. 



EARLY DRAMATIC EFFORTS 73 

the pen of an admiring but faltering imitator of 
Shakespeare. 1 

1 Faire Em/ although not published till 163 1, was 
acted by Shakespeare's company while Lord Strange 
•Faire was its patron, and some lines from it are 
Em -' quoted for purposes of ridicule by Robert 

Greene in his 'Farewell to Folly' in 1592. It is 
another rudimentary endeavour in romantic comedy, 
and has not even the pretension of ' Mucedorus ' to 
one short scene of conspicuous literary merit. 

1 Cf. Dodsley's Old Plays, ed. W. C. Hazlitt, 1874, ii. 236-8. 



74 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

VI 

THE FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC 

During the busy years (i 591-4) that witnessed 
his first pronounced successes as a dramatist, Shake- 
speare came before the public in yet another literary 
capacity. On April 18, 1593, Richard Field, the 
printer, who was his fellow-townsman, obtained a 
license for the publication of ' Venus and Adonis,' a 
Pubiica- metrical version of a classical tale of love. 
'Venus and ^ was P UDnsne d a month or two later, with- 
Adonis.' out an author's name on the title-page, but 
Shakespeare appended his full name to the dedication, 
which he addressed in conventional style to Henry 
Wriothesley, third earl of Southampton. The Earl, 
who was in his twentieth year, was reckoned the 
handsomest man at Court, with a pronounced dispo- 
sition to gallantry. He had vast possessions, was 
well educated, loved literature, and through life 
extended to men of letters a generous patronage. 1 
* I know not how I shall offend,' Shakespeare now 
wrote to him, 'in dedicating my unpolished lines 
to your lordship, nor how the world will censure me 
for choosing so strong a prop to support so weak 
a burden. . . . But if the first heir of my invention 
prove deformed, I shall be sorry it had so noble 
a godfather.' ' The first heir of my invention ' 

1 See Appendix, Sections III. and IV. 



FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC 75 

implies that the poem was written, or at least 
designed, before Shakespeare's dramatic work. It is 
affluent in beautiful imagery and metrical sweetness, 
but imbued with a tone of license which may be held 
either to justify the theory that it was a precocious 
product of the author's youth, or to show that Shake- 
speare was not unready in mature years to write with 
a view to gratifying a patron's somewhat lascivious 
tastes. The title-page bears a beautiful Latin motto 
from Ovid's ' Amores ' : a 

Vilia miretur vulgus; mihi flavus Apollo 
Pocula Castalia plena ministret aqua. 

The influence of Ovid, who told the story in his 
1 Metamorphoses,' is apparent in many of the details. 
But the theme was doubtless first suggested to 
Shakespeare by a contemporary effort. Lodge's 
1 Scillas Metamorphosis,' which appeared in 1589, is 
not only written in the same metre (six-line stanzas 
rhyming a b a b c c), but narrates in the exordium 
the same incidents in the same spirit. There is 
little doubt that Shakespeare drew from Lodge some 
of" his inspiration. 2 

1 See Ovid's Amores, liber i. elegy xv. 11. 35-6. Ovid's Amores, 
or Elegies of Love, were translated by Marlowe about 1589, and were 
first printed without a date on the title-page, probably about 1597. 
Marlowe's version had probably been accessible in manuscript in the 
eight years' interval. Marlowe rendered the lines quoted by Shake- 
speare thus : 

Let base conceited wits admire vile things, 
Fair Phcebus lead me to the Muses' springs! 

2 Shakespeare's Venus and Adonis and Lodge's Scillas Metamor- 
phosis, by James P. Reardon, in ' Shakespeare Society's Papers,' iii. 



j6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

A year after the issue of 'Venus and Adonis,' 
in 1594, Shakespeare published another poem in 
like vein, but far more mature in temper and execu- 
tion. The digression (11. 939-59) on the destroying 
power of Time, especially, is in an exalted key of medi- 
tation which is not sounded in the earlier poem. The 
metre, too, is changed ; seven-line stanzas (Chaucer's 
rhyme royal, a b a b b c c) take the place of six-line 
stanzas. The second poem was entered in the ' Sta- 
tioners' Registers ' on May 9, 1594, under the title of 
' A Booke intitled the Ravyshement of 
Lucrece,' and was published in the same year 
under the title ' Lucrece.' Richard Field printed it, 
and John Harrison published and sold it at the sign 
of the White Greyhound in St. Paul's Churchyard. 
The classical story of Liicretia's ravishment and 
suicide is briefly recorded in Ovid's ' Fasti,' but 
Chaucer had retold it in his ' Legend of Good 
Women,' and Shakespeare must have read it there. 
Again, in topic and metre, the poem reflected a 
contemporary poet's work. Samuel Daniel's ' Com- 

143-6. Cf. Lodge's description of Venus's discovery of the wounded 

Adonis : 

Her daintie hand addrest to dawe her deere, 
Her roseall lip alied to his pale cheeke, 
Her sighs and then her lookes and heavie cheere, 
Her bitter threates, and then her passions meeke; 

How on his senseless corpse she lay a-crying, 
As if the boy were then but new a-dying. 

In the minute description in Shakespeare's poem of the chase of 
the hare (11. 673-708) there are curious resemblances to the Ode de la 
Chasse (on a stag hunt) by the French dramatist, Estienne Jodelle, in 
his (Euvres et Meslanges Po'etiques, 1574. 



FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC ~J 

plaint of Rosamond,' with its seven-line stanza 

(1592), stood to ' Lucrece ' in even closer relation 
than Lodge's ' Scilla,' with its six-line stanza, to 
'Venus and Adonis.' The pathetic accents of Shake- 
speare's heroine are those of Daniel's heroine purified 
and glorified. 1 The passage of Time is elaborated 
from one in Watson's ' Passionate Centurie of Love ' 
(Xo. lxxvii.). 2 Shakespeare dedicated his second 
volume of poetry to the Earl of Southampton, the 
patron of his first. He addressed him in terms of 
devoted friendship, which were not uncommon at the 
time in communications between patrons and poets, 
but suggest that Shakespeare's relations with the 
brilliant young nobleman had grown closer since 

1 Rosamond, in Daniel's poem, muses thus when King Henry 
challenges her honour : 

But what ? he is my King and may constraine me; 
Whether I yeeld or not, I live defamed. 
The World will thinke Authoritie did game me, 
I shall be judg'd his Love and so be shamed; 
We see the faire condemn'd that never gamed, 

And if I yeeld, 'tis honourable shame. 

If not, I live disgrac'd, yet thought the same. 

- 2 Watson makes this comment on his poem or passion on Time 
(No. Lxxvii.) : 'The chiefe contentes of this Passion are taken out of 
Seraphine [i.e. Serafino], Sonnet 132: 

Col tempo passa gli anr.i. i mesi. e l'hore, 
Col tempo le richeze, imperio. e regno, 
Col tempo fama, honor, fortezza, e ingegno, 
Col tempo giouentu, con belta more, &c.' 

Watson adds that he has inverted Serafmo's order for ' rimes 
sake,' or ' upon some other more allowable consideration.' Shake- 
speare was also doubtless acquainted with Giles Fletcher's similar 
handling of the theme in Sonnet xxviii. of his collection of sonnets 
called Licia (1593)- 



78 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

he dedicated ' Venus and Adonis ' to him in colder 
language a year before. 'The love I dedicate to 
your lordship,' Shakespeare wrote in the opening 
pages of ' Lucrece,' ' is without end, whereof this pam- 
phlet without beginning is but a superfluous moiety. 
. . . What I have done is yours ; what I have to do 
is yours ; being part in all I have, devoted yours.' 

In these poems Shakespeare made his earliest 
appeal to the world of readers, and the reading 
Enthusias- public welcomed his addresses with unquali- 
tionofThe ^ e< ^ enthusiasm. The London playgoer 
poems. already knew Shakespeare's name as that of 
a promising actor and playwright, but his dramatic 
efforts had hitherto been consigned in manuscript, 
as soon as the theatrical representation ceased, to the 
coffers of their owner, the playhouse manager. His 
early plays brought him at the outset little repu- 
tation as a man of letters. It was not as the myriad- 
minded dramatist, but in the restricted role of adapter 
for English readers of familiar Ovidian fables that he 
first impressed a wide circle of his contemporaries with 
the fact of his mighty genius. The perfect sweetness 
of the verse, and the poetical imagery in ' Venus and 
Adonis ' and ' Lucrece ' practically silenced censure 
of the licentious treatment of the themes on the part 
of the seriously minded. Critics vied with each 
other in the exuberance of the eulogies in which 
they proclaimed that the fortunate author had gained 
a place in permanence on the summit of Parnassus. 
' Lucrece,' wrote Michael Drayton in his ' Legend of 
Matilda ' (1594), was ' revived to live another age.' In 



FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC 79 

1595 William Clerke in his ' Polimanteia ' gave 'all 
praise' to 'sweet Shakespeare' for his ' Lucrecia.' 
John Weever, in a sonnet addressed to ' honey-tongued 
Shakespeare' in his ' Epigramms ' (1595), eulogised 
the two poems as an unmatchable achievement, al- 
though he mentioned the plays ' Romeo ' and ' Richard ' 
and 'more whose names I know not.' Richard Carew 
at the same time classed him with Marlowe as deserv- 
ing the praises of an English Catullus. 1 Printers and 
publishers of the poems strained their resources to 
satisfy the demands of eager purchasers. No fewer 
than seven editions of ' Venus ' appeared between 
1 594 and 1 602 ; an eighth followed in 1 6 1 7. ' Lucrece ' 
achieved a fifth edition in the year of Shakespeare's 
death. 

There is a likelihood, too, that Spenser, the greatest 
of Shakespeare's poetic contemporaries, was first drawn 
Shake ^y the poems into the ranks of Shakespeare's 
speare and admirers. It is hardly doubtful that Spenser 
described Shakespeare in ' Colin Clouts 
come home again e ' (completed in 1594), under the 
name of 'Aetion,' — a familiar Greek proper name 
derived from 'Aero'?, an eagle : 

And there, though last not least is Aetion ; 

A gentler shepheard may no where be found, 
Whose muse, full of high thought's invention, 

Doth, like himselfe, heroically sound. 

The last line seems to allude to Shakespeare's sur- 
name. We may assume that the admiration was 

1 ' Excellencie of the English Tongue ' in Camden's Remaines, 
P- 43- 



80 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

mutual. At any rate Shakespeare acknowledged 
acquaintance with Spenser's work in a plain reference 
to his 'Teares of the Muses' (i 591) in 'Midsummer 
Night's Dream ' (v. i. 52-3). 

The thrice three Muses, mourning for the death 
Of learning, late deceased in beggary, 

is stated to be the theme of one of the dramatic 
entertainments wherewith it is proposed to celebrate 
Theseus's marriage. In Spenser's ' Teares of the 
Muses ' each of the Nine laments in turn her declin- 
ing influence on the literary and dramatic effort of 
the age. Theseus dismisses the suggestion with the 
not inappropriate comment : 

That is some satire keen and critical, 
Not sorting with a nuptial ceremony. 

But there is no ground for assuming that Spenser in 
the same poem referred figuratively to Shakespeare 
when he made Thalia deplore the recent death of 
' our pleasant Willy.' x The name Willy was fre- 
quently used in contemporary literature as a term of 
familiarity without relation to the baptismal name of 
the person referred to. Sir Philip Sidney was ad- 



1 All these and all that els the Comick Stage, 
With seasoned wit and goodly pleasance graced, 
By which man's life in his likest image 
Was limned forth, are wholly now defaced . . . 
And he, the man whom Nature selfe had made 
To mock her selfe and Truth to imitate, 
With kindly counter under mimick shade 
Our pleasant Willy, ah! is dead of late; 
With whom all joy and jolly merriment 
Is also deaded or in dolour drent. — (11. 198-210.) 



FIRST APPEAL TO THE READING PUBLIC 8 1 

dressed as ' Willy ' by some of his elegists. A comic 
actor, 'dead of late' in a literal sense, was clearly 
intended by Spenser, and there is no reason to dispute 
the view of an early seventeenth-century commentator 
that Spenser was paying a tribute to the loss English 
comedy had lately sustained by the death of the 
comedian, Richard Tarleton. 1 Similarly the 'gentle 
spirit ' who is described by Spenser in a later stanza 
as sitting ' in idle cell ' rather than turn his pen to 
base uses cannot be reasonably identified with Shake- 
speare. 2 

Meanwhile Shakespeare was gaining personal 
esteem outside the circles of actors and men of 
letters. His genius and ' civil demeanour ' of which 
Chettle wrote arrested the notice not only of South- 
ampton's but of other noble patrons of literature 
and the drama. His summons to act at Court with 
the most famous actors of the day at the Christmas 
Patrons at of 1 594 was possibly due in part to personal 
court. interest in himself. Elizabeth quickly 

showed him special favour. Until the end of her 
reign his plays were repeatedly acted in her presence. 
The revised version of 'Love's Labour's Lost' was 
given at Whitehall at Christmas 1597, and tradition 

1 A note to this effect, in a genuine early seventeenth-century hand, 
was discovered by Halliwell-Phillipps in a copy of the 161 1 edition of 
Spenser's Works (cf. Outlines, ii. 394-5). 

2 But that same gentle spirit, from whose pen 
Large streams of honnie and sweete nectar flowe, 
Scorning the boldnes of such base-borne men 
Which dare their follies forth so rashlie throwe, 
Doth rather choose to sit in idle cell 
Than so himselfe to mockerie to sell. — (11. 217-22.) 
G 



82 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

credits the Queen with unconcealed enthusiasm for 
Falstaff, who came into being a little later. Under 
Elizabeth's successor he greatly strengthened his 
hold on royal favour, but Ben Jonson claimed that 
the Queen's appreciation equalled that of James I. 

Those flights upon the banks of Thames, 
That so did take Eliza and our James, — 

of which Jonson wrote in his elegy on Shakespeare 
— included many representations of Shakespeare's 
plays by himself and his fellow-actors at the palaces 
of Whitehall, Richmond, or Greenwich during the 
last decade of Elizabeth's reign. 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 83 



VII 

THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 

It was doubtless to Shakespeare's personal rela- 
tions with men and women of the Court that his 
sonnets owe their existence. In Italy and France the 
practice of writing and circulating series of sonnets in- 
The vogue scribed to great men and women flourished 
zabethan" continuously throughout the sixteenth cen- 
sonnet. tury. In England, until the last decade of 
that century, the vogue was intermittent. Wyatt and 
Surrey inaugurated sonnetteering in the English 
language under Henry VIII, and Thomas Watson 
devoted much energy to the pursuit when Shake- 
speare was a boy. But it was not until 1 591, when 
Sir Philip Sidney's collection of sonnets entitled 
' Astrpphel and Stella ' was first published, that the 
sonnet enjoyed in England any conspicuous or con- 
tinuous favour. For the half-dozen years following 
the appearance of Sir Philip Sidney's volume the 
writing of sonnets, both singly and in connected se- 
quences, engaged more literary activity in this country 
than it engaged at any period here or elsewhere. 1 

1 Section IX. of the Appendix to this volume gives a sketch of each 
of the numerous collections of sonnets which bore witness to the un- 
exampled vogue of the Elizabethan sonnet between 1591 and 1597. 



84 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Men and women of the cultivated Elizabethan nobility 
encouraged poets to celebrate in single sonnets their 
virtues and graces, and under the same patronage 
there were produced multitudes of sonnet-sequences 
which more or less fancifully narrated, after the 
manner of Petrarch and his successors, the pleasures 
and pains of love. Between 1591 and 1597 no 
aspirant to poetic fame in the country failed to seek 
a patron's ears by a trial of skill on the popular 
poetic instrument, and Shakespeare, who habitually 
kept abreast of the currents of contemporary literary 
taste, applied himself to sonnetteering with all the 
force of his poetic genius when the fashion was at its 
height. 

Shakespeare had lightly experimented with the 
sonnet from the outset of his literary career. Three 
Shake- well-turned examples figure in ' Love's 
firsfexperi- Labour's Lost,' probably his earliest play; 
ments. two of the choruses in ' Romeo and Juliet ' 
are couched in the sonnet form ; and a letter of the 
heroine Helen, in 'All's Well that Ends Well,' which 
bears traces of very early composition, takes the same 
shape. It has, too, been argued ingeniously, if not 
convincingly, that he was author of the somewhat 
clumsy sonnet, ' Phaeton to his friend Florio,' which 
prefaced in 1591 Florio's 'Second Frutes,' a series 
of Italian-English dialogues for students. 1 

1 Minto, Characteristics of English Poetry, 1885, pp. 371, 382. 
The sonnet, headed ' Phaeton to his friend Florio,' runs: 

Sweet friend whose name agrees with thy increase, 
How fit arrival art thou of the Spring ! 
For when each branch hath left his flourishing, 
And green-locked Summer's shady pleasure cease : 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 85 

But these were sporadic efforts. It was not till 
the spring of 1593, after Shakespeare had secured 
a nobleman's patronage for his earliest publication, 
'Venus and Adonis,' that he became a sonnetteer 
on an extended scale. Of the hundred and fifty-four 
sonnets that survive outside his plays, the greater 
Majority of number were in all likelihood composed 

Shake- 

speare's between that date and the autumn of 1594, 
sonnets during his thirtieth and thirty-first years. 

composed __. . - - . J 

in 1594. His occasional reterence m the sonnets to his 
growing age was a conventional device — traceable to 
Petrarch — of all sonnetteers of the day, and admits of 

She makes the Winter's storms repose in peace, 
And spends her franchise on each living thing: 
The daisies sprout, the little birds do sing, 
Herbs, gums, and plants do vaunt of their release. 

So when that all our English Wits lay dead, 
(Except the laurel that is ever green) 
Thou with thy Fruit our barrenness o'erspread, 
And set thy flowery pleasance to be seen. 

Such fruits, such flow'rets of morality, 
Were ne'er before brought out of Italy. 

Cf. Shakespeare's Sonnet xcviii. beginning : 

When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim 
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything. 

But like descriptions of Spring and Summer formed a topic that 
was common to all the sonnets of the period. Much has been written 
of Shakespeare's alleged acquaintance with Florio. Farmer and 
Warburton argue that Shakespeare ridiculed Florio in Holofernes in 
Love's Labour's Lost. They chiefly rely on Florio's bombastic prefaces 
to his Worlde of Wordes and his translation of Montaigne's Essays 
(1603). There is nothing there to justify the suggestion. Florio 
writes more in the vein of Armado than of Holofernes, and, beyond 
the fact that he was a teacher of languages to noblemen, he bears no 
resemblance to Holofernes, a village schoolmaster. Shakespeare 
doubtless knew Florio as Southampton's protege, and read his fine 
translation of Montaigne's Essays with delight. He quotes from it in 
The Tempest : see p. 253. 



86 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

no literal interpretation. 1 In matter and in manner 
the bulk of the poems suggest that they came from 
the pen of a man not much more than thirty. Doubt- 
less he renewed his sonnetteering efforts occasionally 

1 Shakespeare writes in his Sonnets : 

My glass shall not persuade me I am old (xxii. i). 

But when my glass shows me myself indeed, 

Beated and chopp'd with tann'd antiquity (lxii. 9-10). 

That time of year thou mayst in me behold 

When yellow leaves, or none, or few do hang (lxxiii. 1-2). 

My days are past the best (cxxxviii. 6). 

Daniel in Delia (xxiii.) in 1591, when twenty-nine years old, ex- 
claimed : 

My years draw on my everlasting night, 

. . . My days are done. 

Richard Barn field, at the age of twenty, bade the boy Ganymede, to 
whom he addressed his Affectionate Shepherd 'and a sequence of sonnets 
in 1594 (ed. Arber, p. 23) : 

Behold my gray head, full of silver hairs, 
My wrinkled skin, deep furrows in my face. 

Similarly Drayton in a sonnet (Idea, xiv.) published in 1594, when he 
was barely thirty-one, wrote : 

Looking into the glass of my youth's miseries, 

I see the ugly face of my deformed cares 

With withered brows all wrinkled with despairs; 

and a little later (No. xliii. of the 1599 edition) he repeated how 

Age rules my lines with wrinkles in my face. 

All these lines are echoes of Petrarch, and Shakespeare and Drayton 
followed the Italian master's words more closely than their contempora- 
ries. Cf. Petrarch's Sonnet cxliii. (to Laura alive), or Sonnet lxxxi. (to 
Laura after death) ; the latter begins : 

Dicemi spesso il mio fidato speglio, 
L' animo stanco e la cangiata scorza 
E la scemata mia destrezza e forza: 
Non ti nasconder piu; tu se' pur veglio. 

(i.e. ' My faithful glass often shows me my weary spirit and my 
wrinkled skin, and my decaying wit and strength : it cannot longer be 
hidden from you, you are old.') 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 87 

and at irregular intervals during the nine years which 
elapsed between 1594 and the accession of James I 
in 1603. But to very few of the extant examples can 
a date later than 1594 be allotted with confidence. 
Sonnet cvn., in which plain reference is made to 
Queen Elizabeth's death, may be fairly regarded as a 
belated and a final act of homage on Shakespeare's 
part to the importunate vogue of the Elizabethan 
sonnet. All the evidence, whether internal or ex- 
ternal, points to the conclusion that the sonnet ex- 
hausted such fascination as it exerted on Shakespeare 
before his dramatic genius attained its full height. 

In literary value Shakespeare's sonnets are notably 
unequal. Many reach levels of lyric melody and medi- 
Their tative energy that are hardly to be matched 

literary elsewhere in poetry. The best examples 
are charged with the mellowed sweetness 
of rhythm and metre, the depth of thought and feel- 
ing, the vividness of imagery and the stimulating fer- 
vour of expression which are the finest proofs of poetic 
power. On the other hand, many sink almost into 
inanity beneath the burden of quibbles and conceits. 
In both their excellences and their defects Shake- 
speare's sonnets betray near kinship to his early 
dramatic work, in which passages of the highest 
poetic temper at times alternate with unimpressive 
displays of verbal jugglery. In phraseology the 
sonnets often closely resemble such early dramatic 
efforts as 'Love's Labour's Lost' and 'Romeo and 
Juliet.' There is far more concentration in the sonnets 
than in ' Venus and Adonis' or in ' Lucrece,' although 



88 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

occasional utterances of Shakespeare's Roman heroine 
show traces of the intensity that characterises the 
best of them. The superior and more evenly sus- 
tained energy of the sonnets is to be attributed, not 
to the accession of power that comes with increase of 
years, but to the innate principles of the poetic form, 
and to metrical exigences, which impelled the sonnet- 
teer to aim at a uniform condensation of thought and 
language. 

In accordance with a custom that was not un- 
Circuiation common, Shakespeare did not publish his 
in manu- sonnets ; he circulated them in manuscript. 1 
But their reputation grew, and public in- 
terest was aroused in them in spite of his unreadi- 

1 The Sonnets of Sidney, Watson, Daniel, and Constable long cir- 
culated in manuscript, and suffered much the same fate as Shakespeare's 
at the hands of piratical publishers. After circulating many years in 
manuscript, Sidney's Sonnets were published in 1591 by an irresponsible 
trader, Thomas Newman, who in his self-advertising dedication wrote of 
the collection that it had been widely ' spread abroad in written copies,' 
and had 'gathered much corruption by ill writers' [i.e. copyists]. 
Constable produced in 1592 a collection of twenty sonnets in a volume 
which he entitled ' Diana.' This was an authorised publication. But 
in 1594 a printer and a publisher, without Constable's knowledge or 
sanction, reprinted these sonnets and scattered them through a volume 
of nearly eighty miscellaneous sonnets by Sidney and many other hands; 
the adventurous publishers bestowed on their medley the title of 'Diana,' 
which Constable had distinctively attached to his own collection. Daniel 
suffered in much the same way. See Appendix ix. for further notes on 
the subject. Proofs of the commonness of the habit of circulating litera- 
ture in manuscript abound. Fulke Greville, writing to Sidney's father-in- 
law, Sir Francis Walsingham. in 1587, expressed regret that uncorrected 
manuscript copies of the then unprinted Arcadia were ' so common.' 
In 1 59 1 Gabriel Cawood, the publisher of Robert Southwell's Mary 
Magdalen's Funeral Tears, wrote that manuscript copies of the work 
had long flown about ' fast and false.' Nash, in the preface to his 



THE SOXXETS AXD THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 89 

ness to give them publicity. A line from one of 
them: 

Lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds (xciv. 14), 1 

was quoted in the play of 'Edward III,' which was 
probably written before 1595. Meres, writing in 1598, 
enthusiastically commends Shakespeare's ' sugred 2 
sonnets among his private friends,' and mentions 
them in close conjunction with his two narrative 
poems. William Jaggard piratically inserted in 1599 
two of the most mature of the series (Nos. cxxxviii. 
and cxliv.) in his 'Passionate Pilgrim.' 

At length, in 1609, the sonnets were surreptitiously 
sent to press. Thomas Thorpe, the moving spirit in 
Their the design of their publication, was a camp- 

pubHcation follower of the regular publishing army. 
in 1609. He was professionally engaged in procur- 
ing for publication literary works which had been 
widely disseminated in written copies and had thus 
passed beyond their authors' control; for the law then 
recognised no natural right in an author to the crea- 
tions of his brain, and the full owner of a manuscript 
copy of any literary composition was entitled to 
reproduce it, or to treat it as he pleased, without 

Terrors of the Night, 1594, described how a copy of that essay, which 
a friend had ' wrested' from him, had ' progressed [without his author- 
ity] from one scrivener's shop to another, and at length grew so com- 
mon that it was ready to be hung out for one of their figures \_i.e. shop- 
signs], like a pair of indentures.' 

1 Cf. Sonnet lxix. 12 : 

To thy fair flower add the rank smell of weeds. 

2 For other instances of the application of this epithet to Shake- 
speare's work, see p. 179, note 1. 



90 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

reference to the author's wishes. Thorpe's career as 
a procurer of neglected ' copy ' had begun well. He 
made, in 1600, his earliest hit by bringing to light 
Marlowe's translation of the ' First Book of Lucan.' 
On May 20, 1609, he obtained a licence for the publi- 
cation of 'Shakespeare's Sonnets,' and this tradesman- 
like form of title figured not only on the ' Stationers' 
Company's Registers,' but on the title-page. Thorpe 
employed George Eld to print the manuscript, and 
two booksellers, William Aspley and John Wright, to 
distribute it to the public. On half the edition 
Aspley's name figured as that of the seller, and on the 
other half that of Wright. The book was issued in 
June, 1 and the owner of the 'copy' left the public 
under no misapprehension as to his share in the pro- 
duction by printing above his initials a dedicatory 
preface from his own pen. The appearance in a 
book of a dedication from the publisher's (instead of 
from the author's) pen was, unless the substitution 
was specifically accounted for on other grounds, an 
accepted sign that the author had no hand in the 
publication. Except in the case of his two narrative 
poems, which were published in 1593 and 1594 respec- 
tively, Shakespeare made no effort to publish any of 
his works, and uncomplainingly submitted to the 
wholesale piracies of his plays and the ascription to 
him of books by other hands. Such practices were 
encouraged by his passive indifference and the con- 
temporary condition of the law of copyright. He 

1 The actor Alleyn paid fivepence for a copy in that month (cf. 
Warner's Didwich MSS., p. 92). 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 9 1 

cannot be credited with any responsibility for the 
publication of Thorpe's collection of his sonnets in 
1609. With characteristic insolence Thorpe took the 
added liberty of appending a previously imprinted 
poem of forty-nine seven-line stanzas (the metre of 
■a Lovers ' Lucrece ' ) entitled 'A Lover's Complaint,' 
Complaint: - m w hi c h a girl laments her betrayal by a 
deceitful youth. The poem, in a gentle Spenserian 
vein, has no connection with the 'Sonnets.' If, as 
is possible, it be by Shakespeare, it must have been 
written in very early days. 

A misunderstanding respecting Thorpe's preface 
and his part in the publication has led many critics 
into a serious misinterpretation of Shakespeare's 
poems. 1 Thorpe's dedication was couched in the 
bombastic language which was habitual to him. 
Thomas He advertised Shakespeare as ' our ever- 
and'Mr living poet.' As the chief promoter of 
w. h: the undertaking, he called himself ' the 
well-wishing adventurer in setting forth,' and in reso- 
nant phrase designated as the patron of the venture 

" x The chief editions of the sonnets that have appeared, with critical 
apparatus, of late years are those of Professor Dowden (1875, reissued 
1896), Mr. Thomas Tyler (1890), and Mr. George Wyndham, M.P. 
(1898). Mr. Gerald Massey's Secret Drama of Shakespeare's Sonnets 
— the text of the poems with a full discussion — appeared in a second 
revised edition in 1888. I regret to find myself in more or less com- 
plete disagreement with all these writers, although I am at one with 
Mr. Massey in identifying the young man to whom many of the sonnets 
were addressed with the Earl of Southampton. A short bibliography 
of the works advocating the theory that the sonnets were addressed 
to William, third Earl of Pembroke, is given in Appendix VI. ' Mr. 
William Herbert,' note 1. 



92 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

a partner in the speculation, 'Mr. W. H.' In the 
conventional dedicatory formula of the day he wished 
'Mr. W. H.' 'all happiness' and 'eternity,' such 
eternity as Shakespeare in the text of the sonnets 
conventionally foretold for his own verse. When 
Thorpe was organising the issue of Marlowe's ' First 
Book of Lucan ' in 1600, he sought the patronage of 
Edward Blount, a friend in the trade. ' W. H.' was 
doubtless in a like position. He is best identified with 
a stationer's assistant, William Hall, who was profes- 
sionally engaged, like Thorpe, in procuring 'copy.' In 
1606 ' W. H.' won a conspicuous success in that direc- 
tion, and conducted his operations under cover of the 
familiar initials. In that year ' W. H.' announced that 
he had procured a neglected manuscript poem — ' A 
Foure-fold Meditation ' — -by the Jesuit Robert South- 
well who had been executed in 1595, and he published 
it with a dedication (signed ' W. H.') vaunting his good 
fortune in meeting with such treasure-trove. When 
Thorpe dubbed ' Mr. W. H.,' with characteristic mag- 
niloquence, 'the onlie begetter [i.e. obtainer or pro- 
curer] of these ensuing sonnets,' he merely indicated 
that that personage was the first of the pirate-publisher 
fraternity to procure a manuscript of Shakespeare's 
sonnets and recommend its surreptitious issue. In 
accordance with custom, Thorpe gave Hall's initials 
only, because he was an intimate associate who 
was known by those initials to their common circle 
of friends. Hall was not a man of sufficiently 
wide public reputation to render it probable that the 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 93 

printing of his full name would excite additional 
interest in the book or attract buyers. 

The common assumption that Thorpe in this boast- 
ful preface was covertly addressing, under the initials 
'Mr. W. H.,' a young nobleman, to whom the sonnets 
were originally addressed by Shakespeare, ignores the 
elementary principles of publishing transactions of 
the day, and especially of those of the type to which 
Thorpe's efforts were confined. 1 There was nothing 
mysterious or fantastic, although from a modern point 
of view there was much that lacked principle, in 
Thorpe's methods of business. His choice of patron 
for this, like all his volumes, was dictated solely by his 
mercantile interests. He was under no inducement 
and in no position to take into consideration the 
affairs of Shakespeare's private life. Shakespeare, 
through all but the earliest stages of his career, 
belonged socially to a world that was cut off by im- 

1 It has been wrongly inferred that Shakespeare asserts in Sonnets 
cxxxv.-vi. and cxliii. that the young friend to whom he addressed some 
of the sonnets bore his own christian name of Will (see for a full examina- 
tion of these sonnets Appendix viil.). Further, it has been fantastically 
suggested that the line (xx. 7) describing the youth as ' A man in hue, 
all hues in his controlling' {i.e. a man in colour or complexion whose 
charms are so varied as to appear to give his countenance control of, or 
enable it to assume, all manner of fascinating hues or complexions), and 
other applications to the youth of the ordinary word ' hue,' imply that 
his surname was Hughes. There is no other pretence of argument for 
the conclusion, which a few critics have hazarded in all seriousness, that 
the friend's name was William Hughes. There was a contemporary 
musician called William Hughes, but no known contemporary of the 
name, either in age or position in life, bears any resemblance to the 
young man who is addressed by Shakespeare in his sonnets. 



94 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

passable barriers from that in which Thorpe pursued 
his calling. It was wholly outside Thorpe's aims in 
life to seek to mystify his customers by investing a 
dedication with any cryptic significance. 

No peer of the day, moreover, bore a name which 
could be represented by the initials 'Mr. W. H.' 
Shakespeare was never on terms of intimacy (although 
the contrary has often been recklessly assumed) with 
William, third Earl of Pembroke, when a youth. 1 
But were complete proofs of the acquaintanceship 
forthcoming, they would throw no light on Thorpe's 
.'Mr. W. H.' The Earl of Pembroke was, from his birth 
to the date of his succession to the earldom in 1601, 
known by the courtesy title of Lord Herbert and by no 
other name, and he could not have been designated at 
any period of his life by the symbols ' Mr. W. H.' In 
1609 Pembroke was a high officer of state, and 
numerous books were dedicated to him in all the 
splendour of his many titles. Star-Chamber penalties 
would have been exacted of any publisher or author 
who denied him in print his titular distinctions. 
Thorpe had occasion to dedicate two books to the 
earl in later years, and he there showed not merely 
that he was fully acquainted with the compulsory 
etiquette, but that his sycophantic temperament ren- 
dered him only eager to improve on the conventional 
formulas of servility. Any further considerations of 
Thorpe's address to 'Mr. W. H.' belongs to the 



1 See Appendix VI., ' Mr. William Herbert ; and VII. « Shake- 
speare and the Earl of Pembroke.' 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 95 

biographies of Thorpe and his friend ; it lies outside 
the scope of Shakespeare's biography. 1 

Shakespeare's ' Sonnets ' ignore the somewhat 
complex scheme of rhyme adopted by Petrarch, 
The form whom the Elizabethan sonnetteers, like the 
° re's 6 " French sonnetteers of the sixteenth century, 
Sonnets. recognised to be in most respects their master. 
Following the example originally set by Surrey and 
Wyatt, and generally pursued by Shakespeare's con- 
temporaries, his sonnets aim at far greater metrical 
simplicity than the Italian or the French. They 
consist of three decasyllabic quatrains with a con- 
cluding couplet, and the quatrains rhyme alternately. 2 

1 The full results of my researches into Thorpe's history, his methods 
of business, and the significance of his dedicatory addresses, of which 
four are extant besides that prefixed to the volume of Shakespeare's 
Sonnets in 1609, are given in Appendix v., 'The True History of 
Thomas Thorpe and " Mr. W. H." ' 

2 The form of fourteen-line stanza adopted by Shakespeare is in no 
way peculiar to himself. It is the type recognised by Elizabethan writers 
on metre as correct and customary in England long before he wrote. 
George Gascoigne, in his Certayne Notes of Instruction concerning the 
making of Verse or Ryme in English (published in Gascoigne's Posies, 
1575), defined sonnets thus : ' Fouretene lynes, every lyne conteyning 
tenne syllables. The first twelve to ryme in staves of foure lynes by 
cross metre and the last two ryming togither, do conclude the whole.' 
In twenty-one of the 108 sonnets of which Sidney's collection entitled 
Astrophel and Stella consists, the rhymes are on the foreign model and 
the final couplet is avoided. But these are exceptional. As is not 
uncommon in Elizabethan sonnet-collections, one of Shakespeare's 
sonnets (xcix.) has fifteen lines; another (cxxvi.) has only twelve lines, 
and those in rhymed couplets (cf. Lodge's Phillis, Nos. viii. and xxvi.) ; 
and a third (cxlv.) is in octosyllabics. But it is very doubtful whether 
the second and third of these sonnets rightly belong to Shakespeare's 
collection. They were probably written as independent lyrics ; see 
p. 97, note I. 



g6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

A single sonnet does not always form an indepen- 
dent poem. As in the French and Italian sonnets 
of the period, and in those of Spenser, Sidney, Daniel, 
and Drayton, the same train of thought is at times 
pursued continuously through two or more. The 
collection of Shakespeare's 154 sonnets thus presents 
the appearance of an extended series of independent 
poems, many in a varying number of fourteen-line 
stanzas. The longest sequence (i.-xvii.) numbers 
seventeen sonnets, and in Thorpe's edition opens the 
volume. 

It is unlikely that the order in which the poems 
were printed follows the order in which they were 
Want of written. Fantastic endeavours have been 
continuity. m ade to detect in the original arrangement 
of the poems a closely connected narrative, but the 
thread is on any showing constantly interrupted. 1 
The two It is usual to divide the sonnets into two 
'groups.' groups, and to represent that all those 
numbered i.-cxxvi. by Thorpe were addressed to a 
young man, and all those numbered cxxvii.-cliv. were 
addressed to a woman. This division cannot be 

1 If the critical ingenuity which has detected a continuous thread of 
narrative in the order that Thorpe printed Shakespeare's sonnets were 
applied to the booksellers' miscellany of sonnets called Diana (1594), 
that volume, which rakes together sonnets on all kinds of amorous 
subjects from all quarters and numbers them consecutively, could be 
made to reveal the sequence of an individual lover's moods quite as 
readily, and, if no external evidence were admitted, quite as convin- 
cingly as Thorpe's collection of Shakespeare's sonnets. Almost all 
Elizabethan sonnets are not merely in the like metre, but are pitched 
in what sounds superficially to be the same key of pleading or yearning. 
Thus almost every collection gives at a first perusal a specious and 
delusive impression of homogeneity. 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 97 

literally justified. In the first group some eighty of 
the sonnets can be proved to be addressed to a man 
by the use of the masculine pronoun or some other 
unequivocal sign ; but among the remaining forty 
there is no clear indication of the kind. Many of 
these forty are meditative soliloquies which address no 
person at all (cf. cv. cxvi. cxix. cxxi.). A few in- 
voke abstractions like Death (lxvi.) or Time (cxxiii.), 
or 'benefit of ill' (cxix.). The twelve-lined poem 
(cxxvi.), the last of the first 'group,' does little more 
than sound a variation on the conventional poetic in- 
vocations of Cupid or Love personified as a boy. 1 And 
there is no valid objection to the assumption that the 
poet inscribed the rest of these forty sonnets to a 
woman (cf . xxi. xlvi. xlvii.). Similarly, the sonnets in 
the second ' group ' (cxxvii.-cliv.) have no uniform 
superscription. Six invoke no person at all. No. 
cxxviii. is an overstrained compliment on a lady play- 
ing on the virginals. No. cxxix. is a metaphysical 
disquisition on lust. No. cxlv. is a playful lyric in 

1 Shakespeare merely warns his ' lovely boy ' that, though he be 
now the ' minion ' of Nature's ' pleasure,' he will not succeed in defying 
Time's inexorable law. Sidney addresses in a lighter vein Cupid — 
' blind-hitting boy,' he calls him — in his Astrophel (No. xlvi.). Cupid 
is similarly invoked in three of Drayton's sonnets (No. xxvi. in the 
edition of 1594, and Nos. xxxiii. and xxxiv. in that of 1605), and 
in six in Fulke Greville's collection entitled C<zlica (cf. lxxxiv., begin- 
ning 'Farewell, sweet boy, complain not of my truth' ). Lyly in his 
Sapho and Phao, 1584, and in his Mother Bombie, 1598, has songs of like 
temper addressed in the one case to ' O Cruel love ! ' and in the other 
to ' O Cupid ! monarch over kings.' A similar theme to that of Shake- 
speare's Sonnet cxxvi. is treated by John Ford in the song, ' Love is 
ever dying,' in his tragedy of the Broken Heart, 1633. 
H 



98 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

octosyllabics, like Lyly's song of ' Cupid and Campaspe,' 
and its tone has close affinity to that and other of 
Lyly's songs. No. cxlvi. invokes the soul of man. 
Nos. cliii. and cliv. soliloquise on an ancient Greek 
apologue on the force of Cupid's fire. 1 

The choice and succession of topics in each 
' group ' give to neither genuine cohesion. In the 
first ' group ' the long opening sequence (i.-xvii.) 
forms the poet's appeal to a young man to marry 
so that his youth and beauty may survive in children. 
There is almost a contradiction in terms between 
the poet's handling of that topic and his emphatic 
boast in the two following sonnets (xviii.-xix.) that 
his verse alone is fully equal to the task of immor- 
Main talising his friend's youth and accomplish- 

thefirs? ments. The same asseveration is repeated 
'group.' in many later sonnets (cf. lv. lx. lxiii. 
lxxiv. lxxxi. ci. cvii.). These alternate with conven- 
tional adulation of the beauty of the object of the 
poet's affections (cf. xxi. liii. lxviii.) and descriptions 
of the effects of absence in intensifying devotion (cf. 
xlviii. 1. cxiii.). There are many reflections on the 
nocturnal torments of a lover (cf. xxvii. xxviii. 
xliii. 1. lxi.) and on his blindness to the beauty of 
spring or summer when he is separated from his love 
(cf. xcvii. xcviii.). At times a youth is rebuked for 
sensual indulgences ; he has sought and won the 
favour of the poet's mistress in the poet's absence, 
but the poet is forgiving (xxxii.-xxxv. xl.-xlii. lxix. 
xcv.-xcvi.). In Sonnet lxx. the young man whom 

1 See p. 113, note 2. 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 99 

the poet addresses is credited with a different disposi- 
tion and experience : 

And thou present'st a pure unstained prime. 
Thou hast pass'd by the ambush of young days, 
Either not assail'd, or victor being charg'd ! 

At times melancholy overwhelms the writer : he 
despairs of the corruptions of the age (lxvi.), re- 
proaches himself with carnal sin(cxix.), declares him- 
self weary of his profession of acting (cxi. cxii.), and 
foretells his approaching death (lxxi.-lxxiv.). Through- 
out are dispersed obsequious addresses to the youth in 
his capacity of sole patron of the poet's verse (cf. xxiii. 
xxxvii. c. ci. ciii. civ.). But in one sequence the friend 
is sorrowfully reproved for bestowing his patronage 
on rival poets (lxxviii.-lxxxvi.). In three sonnets 
near the close of the first group in the original edition 
the writer gives varied assurances of his constancy in 
love or friendship which apply indifferently to man or 
woman (cf. cxxii. cxxiv. cxxv.). 

In two sonnets of the second ' group ' (cxxvi.- 
clii.) the poet compliments his mistress on her black 
complexion and raven-black hair and eyes. In twelve 
sonnets he hotly denounces his ' dark ' mistress for 
her proud disdain of his affection, and for her mani- 
fold infidelities with other men. Apparently con- 
Main tinuing a theme of the first 'group,' the poet 
thTsecond re bukes the woman, whom he addresses, for 
'group.' having beguiled his friend to yield himself to 
her seductions (cxxxiii.-cxxxvi. ). Elsewhere he makes 
satiric reflections on the extravagant compliments 
paid to the fair sex by other sonnetteers (No. cxxx.), 



IOO WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

or lightly quibbles on his name of 'Will' (cxxx.-vi.). 
In tone and subject-matter numerous sonnets in the 
second as in the first ' group ' lack visible sign of 
coherence with those they immediately precede or 
follow. 

It is not merely a close study of the text that 
confutes the theory, for which recent writers have 
fought hard, of a logical continuity in Thorpe's 
arrangement of the poems in 1609. There remains 
the historic fact that readers and publishers of the 
seventeenth century acknowledged no sort of signifi- 
cance in the order in which the poems first saw the 
light. When the sonnets were printed for a second 
time in 1640 — thirty-one years after their first 
appearance — they were presented in a completely 
different order. The short descriptive titles which 
were then supplied to single sonnets or to short 
sequences proved that the collection was regarded as 
a disconnected series of occasional poems in more 
or less amorous vein. 

In whatever order Shakespeare's sonnets be 
studied, the claim that has been advanced in their 
Lack of behalf to rank as autobiographical docu- 
fentiment m ents can only be accepted with many 
in Eliza- qualifications. Elizabethan sonnets were 

betnan ^ 

sonnets. commonly the artificial products of the poet's 
fancy. A strain of personal emotion is occasionally 
discernible in a detached effort, and is vaguely trace- 
able in a few sequences ; but autobiographical con- 
fessions were very rarely the stuff of which the 
Elizabethan sonnet was made. The typical collection 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY IOI 

of Elizabethan sonnets was a mosaic of plagiarisms, 
a medley of imitative studies. Echoes of the French 
or of the Italian sonnetteers, with their Platonic 
idealism, are usually the dominant notes. The echoes 
often have a musical quality peculiar to themselves. 
Daniel's fine sonnet (xlix.) on 'Care-charmer, sleep,' 
although directly inspired by the French, breathes a 
finer melody than the sonnet of Pierre de Brach J 
Their de- apostrophising Me sommeil chasse-soin ' 
pendence n n t h e collection entitled ' Les Amours 

on French \ 

and Italian d Aymee ), or the sonnet of Philippe Des- 
modeis. portes invoking ' Sommeil, paisible nls 
de la nuit solitaire ' (in the collection entitled 
'Amours d'Hippolyte ' ). 2 But, throughout Eliza- 
bethan sonnet literature, the heavy debt to Italian and 
French effort is unmistakable. 3 Spenser, in 1569, at 
the outset of his literary career, avowedly translated 
numerous sonnets from Du Bellay and from Petrarch, 
and his friend Gabriel Harvey bestowed on him the 
title of ' an English Petrarch ' — the highest praise that 
the critic conceived it possible to bestow on an English 
sonnetteer. 4 Thomas Watson in 1582, in his collec- 

1 1 547-1 604. Cf. De Brach, CEuvres Poetiques, edited by Reinhold 
Dezeimeris, 1861, i. pp. 59-60. 

2 See Appendix ix. 

3 Section X. of the Appendix to this volume supplies a bibliographi- 
cal note on the sonnet in France between 1550 and 1600, with a list of 
the' sixteenth-century sonnetteers of Italy. 

4 Gabriel Harvey, in his Pierces Supererogation (1593, p. 61), after 
enthusiastic commendation of Petrarch's sonnets (' Petrarch's invention 
is pure love itself ; Petrarch's elocution pure beauty itself), justifies the 
common English practice of imitating them on the ground that ' all the 
noblest Italian, French, and Spanish poets have in their several veins 



102 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

tion of metrically irregular sonnets which he entitled 
1 'EKATOMII A@IA, or a Passionate Century of Love,' 
prefaced each poem, which he termed a ' passion/ with 
a prose note of its origin and intention. Watson frankly 
informed his readers that one ' passion ' was ' wholly 
translated out of Petrarch ; ' that in another passion 
' he did very busily imitate and augment a certain ode 
of Ronsard ; ' while l the sense or matter of " a third " 
was taken out of Serafino in his " Strambotti." ' In 
every case Watson gave the exact reference to his 

Petrarchised ; and it is no dishonour for the daintiest or divinest Muse 
to be his scholar, whom the amiablest invention and beautifullest elo- 
cution acknowledge their master.' Both French and English sonnet- 
teers habitually admit that they are open to the charge of plagiarising 
Petrarch's sonnets to Laura (cf. Du Bellay's Les Amours, ed. Becq 
de Fouquieres, 1876, p. 186, and Daniel's Delia, Sonnet xxxviii.). 
The dependent relations in which both English and French sonnetteers 
stood to Petrarch may be best realised by comparing such a popular 
sonnet of the Italian master as No. ciii. (or in some editions lxxxviii.) in 
Sonetti in Vita di M. Laura, beginning ' S' amor non e, che dunque 
e quel ch' i' sento ? ' with a rendering of it into French like that of 
De Baif in his Amours de Francine (ed. Becq de Fouquieres, p. 121), 
beginning, 'Si ce n'est pas Amour, que sent donques mon coeur; ' or 
with a rendering of the same sonnet into English like that by Watson 
in his Passionate Century, No. v., beginning, ' If 't bee not love I feele, 
what is it then ? ' Imitation of Petrarch is a constant characteristic 
of the English sonnet throughout the sixteenth century from the date of 
the earliest efforts of Surrey and Wyatt. It is interesting to compare 
the skill in rendering the Italian master of the early and late sonnetteers. 
Petrarch's sonnet In Vita di M. Laura (No. Ixxx. or lxxxi., beginning 
• Cesare, poi che '1 traditor d' Egitto ') was independently translated 
both by Sir Thomas Wyatt, about 1530 (ed. Bell, p. 60), and by Francis 
Davison in his Poetical Rhapsody (1602, ed. Bullen, i. 90). Petrarch's 
sonnet (No. xcv. or cxiii.) was also rendered independently both by 
Wyatt (cf. Puttenham's Arte of English Poesie, ed. Arber, p, 23) and 
by Drummond of Hawthornden (ed. Ward, i, 100, 221). 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 103 

foreign original, and frequently appended a quotation. 1 
Drayton in 1 594, in the dedicatory sonnet of his collec- 
tion of sonnets entitled ' Idea,' declared that it was ' a 
fault too common in this latter time ' ' to filch from 
Desportes or from Petrarch's pen.' 2 Lodge did not 
acknowledge his borrowings more specifically than his 
colleagues, but he made a plain profession of indebted- 
ness to Desportes when he wrote : ' Few men are able 
to second the sweet conceits of Philippe Desportes, 
whose poetical writings are ordinarily in everybody's 
hand.' 3 Giles Fletcher, who in his collection of 

1 Eight of Watson's sonnets are, according to his own account, ren- 
derings from Petrarch ; twelve are from Serafino dell' Aquila (1466- 
1500) ; four each come from Strozza, an Italian poet, and from Ronsard ; 
three from the Italian poet Agnolo Fiorenzuola (1493-1548); two each 
from the French poet, Etienne Forcadel, known as Forcatulus (1514?- 
1573), the Italian Girolamo Parabosco (fl. 1548), and ^Eneas Sylvius; 
while many are based on passages from such authors as (among the 
Greeks) Sophocles, Theocritus, Apollonius of Rhodes (author of the epic 
' Argonautica ') ; or (among the Latins) Virgil, Tibullus, Ovid, Horace, 
Propertius, Seneca, Pliny, Lucan, Martial, and Valerius Flaccus; or 
(among other modern Italians) Politian (1454-94) and Baptista 
Mantuanus (1448-1516); or (among other modern Frenchmen) Ger- 
vasius Sepinus of Saumur, writer of eclogues after the manner of 
Virgil and Mantuanus. 

2 No importance can be attached to Drayton's pretensions to greater 
originality than his neighbours. The very line in which he makes the 
claim (' I am no pick-purse of another's wit ') is a verbatim theft from 
a sonnet of Sir Philip Sidney. 

3 Lodge's Margarite, p. 79. See Appendix IX. for the text of 
Desportes's sonnet (Diane, livre ii. No. iii.) and Lodge's translation 
in Phillis. Lodge gave two other translations of the same sonnet of 
Desportes — in his romance of Rosalind (Hunterian Society's reprint, 
p. 74), and in his volume of poems called Scillces Metamorphosis (p. 44). 
Sonnet xxxiii. of Lodge's Phillis is rendered with equal literalness from 
Ronsard. But Desportes was Lodge's special master. 



104 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

sonnets called ' Licia ' (1593) simulated the varying 
moods of a lover under the sway of a great passion 
as successfully as most of his rivals, stated on his 
title-page that his poems were all written in ' imitation 
of the best Latin poets and others.' Very many of 
the love-sonnets in the series of sixty-eight penned 
ten years later by William Drummond of Hawthorn- 
den have been traced to their sources in the Italian 
sonnets not merely of Petrarch, but of the sixteenth- 
century poets Guarini, Bembo, Giovanni Battista 
Marino, Tasso, and Sannazzaro. 1 The Elizabethans 
usually gave the fictitious mistresses after whom their 
volumes of sonnets were called the names that had 
recently served the like purpose in France. Daniel 
followed Maurice Seve 2 in christening his collection 
' Delia ' ; Constable followed Desportes in christen- 
ing his collection ' Diana ' ; while Drayton not only 
applied to his sonnets on his title-page in 1594 the 
French term ' amours,' but bestowed on his imagi- 
nary heroine the title of Idea, which seems to have 
been the invention of Claude de Pontoux, 3 although 
it was employed by other French contemporaries. 

With good reason Sir Philip Sidney warned the 
public that ' no inward touch ' was to be expected 
from sonnetteers of this day, whom he describes as : 

[Men] that do dictionary's method bring 
Into their rhymes running in rattling rows ; 
[Men] that poor Petrarch's long-deceased woes 
With newborn sighs and denizened wit do sing. 

1 See Drummond's Poems, ed. W. C. Ward, in Muses' Library, 
1894, i. 207 seq. 

2 Seve's Delie was first published at Lyons in 1544. 3 1530-79. 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 105 

Sidney unconvincingly claimed greater sincerity for 
his own experiments. But ' even amorous sonnets in 
Sonnet- the gallantest and sweetest civil vein," wrote 
!!?«JL f Gabriel Harvey in ' Pierces Supererogation ' 

missions of J r & 

insincerity, in 1 593, 'are but dainties of a pleasurable 
wit.' Drayton's sonnets more nearly approached 
Shakespeare's in quality than those of any contem- 
porary. Yet Drayton told the readers of his collec- 
tion entitled ' Idea ' 1 (after the French) that if any 
sought genuine passion in them, they had better go 
elsewhere. 'In all humours sportively he ranged,' he 
declared. Giles Fletcher, in 1593, introduced his 
collection of imitative sonnets entitled ' Licia, or 
Poems of Love,' with the warning, ' now in that I 
have written love sonnets, if any man measure 
my affection by my style, let him say I am in love. 
. . . Here, take this by the way, ... a man may 
write of love and not be in love, as well as of 

1 In two of his century of sonnets (Nos. xiii. and xxiv. in 1 594 
edition, renumbered xxxii. and liii. in 1619 edition) Drayton hints 
that his ' fair Idea ' embodied traits of an identifiable lady of his ac- 
quaintance, and he repeats the hint in two other short poems; but 
the fundamental principles of his sonnetteering exploits are defined 
explicitly in Sonnet xviii. in 1594 edition. 

Some, when in rhyme, they of their loves do tell, . . . 
Only I call [i.e. I call only] on my divine Idea. 

Joachim du Bellay, one of the French poets who anticipated Drayton 
in addressing sonnets to ' LTdee,' left the reader in no doubt of his intent 
by concluding one poem thus : 

La, o mon ame. au plus hault ciel guidee, 
Tu y pourras recognoistre l'Idee 
De la beaute qu'en ce monde j'adore. 

(Du Bellay's Olive, No. cxiii. published in 1568.) 



106 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

husbandry and not go to the plough, or of witches 
and be none, or of holiness and be profane.' 1 

The dissemination of false sentiment by the 
sonnetteers, and their monotonous and mechanical 
Contempo- treatment of 'the pangs of despised love' 
sureoT or the joys of requited affection, did not 
teers^faise esca P e the censure of contemporary criti- 
sentiment. c i sm . The a j r soon rang with sarcastic 
protests from the most respected writers of the day. 
In early life Gabriel Harvey wittily parodied the 
mingling of adulation and vituperation in the con- 
ventional sonnet-sequence in his 'Amorous Odious 
Sonnet intituled The Student's Loove or Hatrid.' 2 
Chapman in 1595, in a series of sonnets entitled ' A 
Coronet for his mistress Philosophy,' appealed to his 
literary comrades to abandon ' the painted cabinet ' 
of the love-sonnet for a coffer of genuine worth. But 
the most resolute of the censors of the sonnetteering 
vogue was the poet and lawyer, Sir John Davies. In 
a sonnet addressed about 1596 to his friend, Sir 
Anthony Cooke (the patron of Drayton's ' Idea '), he 
inveighed against the ' bastard sonnets ' which ' base 
rhymers' ' daily ' begot ' to their own shames and 
■Gulling poetry's disgrace.' In his anxiety to stamp 
Sonnets.' out tne folly he wrote and circulated in 
manuscript a specimen series of nine ' gulling sonnets ' 

1 Ben Jonson pointedly noticed the artifice inherent in the metrical 
principles of the sonnet when he told Drummond of Hawthornden that 
' he cursed Petrarch for redacting verses to sonnets which he said were 
like that tyrant's bed, where some who were too short were racked, 
others too long cut short' (Jonson's Conversation, p. 4). 

2 See p. 121 infra. 



THE SONNETS AND THEIR LITERARY HISTORY 107 

or parodies of the conventional efforts. 1 Even Shake- 
speare does not seem to have escaped Davies's con- 
demnation. Sir John is especially severe on the 
sonnetteers who handled conceits based on legal 
technicalities, and his eighth 'gulling sonnet,' in 
which he ridicules the application of law terms to 
affairs of the heart, mav well have been su^o-ested 
by Shakespeare's legal phraseology in his Sonnets 
Ixxxvii. and cxxiv. ; 2 while Davies's Sonnet ix., 
beginning : 

To love, my lord, I do knight's service owe, 

must have parodied Shakespeare's Sonnet xxvi., begin- 
ning : 

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage, &c. s 

Echoes of the critical hostility are heard, it is curi- 
ous to note, in nearly all the references that Shake- 
shake- speare himself makes to sonnetteering in his 
scomfui plays. ( Tush, none but minstrels like of son- 
sorTne^in 3 ne tting,' exclaims Biron in ' Love's Labour's 
his plays. L ost ' (jy jjj I5 g) j n the c Two Gentlemen 

of Verona ' (in. ii. 68 seq.) there is a satiric touch in 
the recipe for the conventional love-sonnet which 
Proteus offers the amorous Duke : 

You must lay lime to tangle her desires 
By wailful sonnets whose composed rime 

1 They were first printed by Dr. Grosart for the Chetham Society 
in 1873 in his edition of 'the Dr. Earmer MS., 1 a sixteenth and seven- 
teenth century commonplace book preserved in the Chetham Librarv 
at Manchester, pt. i. pp. 76-81. Dr. Grosart also included the poems 
in his edition of Sir John Davies's Works, 1876, ii. 53-62. 

2 Davies's Sonnet viii. is printed in Appendix IX. 

3 See p. 127 infra. 



108 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Should be full fraught with serviceable vows . . . 

Say that upon the altar of her beauty 

You sacrifice your sighs, your tears, your heart. 

Mercutio treats Elizabethan sonnetteers even less 
respectfully when alluding to them in his flouts at 
Romeo : ' Now is he for the numbers that Petrarch 
flowed in : Laura, to his lady, was but a kitchen- 
wench. Marry, she had a better love to be-rhyme 
her.' 1 In later plays Shakespeare's disdain of the 
sonnet is still more pronounced. In ' Henry V ' (in. vii. 
33 seq.) the Dauphin, after bestowing ridiculously mag- 
niloquent commendation on his charger, remarks, ' I 
once writ a sonnet in his praise, and begun thus : 
" Wonder of nature ! " The Duke of Orleans retorts : 
' I have heard a sonnet begin so to one's mistress.' 
The Dauphin replies : ' Then did they imitate that 
which I composed to my courser; for my horse is my 
mistress.' In ' Much Ado About Nothing ' (v. ii. 4-7) 
Margaret, Hero's waiting-woman, mockingly asks 
Benedick to ' write her a sonnet in praise of her 
beauty.' Benedick jestingly promises one so 'in high 
a style that no man living shall come over it.' Sub- 
sequently (v. iv. 87) Benedick is convicted, to the 
amusement of his friends, of penning ' a halting 
sonnet of his own pure brain ' in praise of Beatrice. 

1 Romeo and Juliet, II. iv. 41-4. 



THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS 109 



VIII 

THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS 

At a first glante a far larger proportion of Shake- 
speare's sonnets give the reader the illusion of per- 
sonal confessions than those of any contemporary, 
but when allowance has been made for the current 
conventions of Elizabethan sonnetteering, as well as 
for Shakespeare's unapproached affluence in dramatic 
Slender au- instinct and invention — an affluence which 
icai°efe r - aph " enabled him to identify himself with every 
ment in phase of human emotion — the autobiographic 
speare's element in his sonnets, although it may not 
sonnets. be dismissed altogether, is seen to shrink to 
slender proportions. As soon as the collection is stud- 
ied comparatively with the many thousand sonnets that 
the printing presses of England, France, and Italy 
poured forth during the last years of the sixteenth 
century, a vast number of Shakespeare's performances 
prove to be little more than professional trials of 
-, . . skill, often of superlative merit, to which 

1 ne lmi- 7 l ' 

tative eie- he deemed himself challenged by the efforts 
of contemporary practitioners. The thoughts 
and words of the sonnets of Daniel, Drayton, Watson, 
Barnabe Barnes, Constable, and Sidney were assimi- 
lated by Shakespeare in his poems as consciously and 
with as little compunction as the plays and novels of 



IIO WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

contemporaries in his dramatic work. To Drayton he 
was especially indebted. 1 Such resemblances as are 
visible between Shakespeare's sonnets and those of 
Petrarch or Desportes seem due to his study of the 
English imitators of those sonnetteers. Most of Ron- 

1 Mr. Fleay in his Biographical Chronicle of the English Stage, 
ii. 226 seq., gives a striking list of parallels between Shakespeare's and 
Drayton's sonnets which any reader of the two collections in conjunc- 
tion could easily increase. Mr. Wyndham in his valuable edition of 
Shakespeare's Sonnets, p. 255, argues that Drayton was the plagiarist 
of Shakespeare, chiefly on bibliographical grounds, which he does not 
state quite accurately. One hundred sonnets belonging to Drayton's 
Idea series are extant, but they were not all published by him at one 
time. Fifty-three were alone included in his first and only separate 
edition of 1594; six more appeared in a reprint of Idea appended to 
the Heroical Epistles in 1599; twenty-four of these were gradually 
dropped and thirty-four new ones substituted in reissues appended 
to volumes of his writings issued respectively in 1600, 1602, 1603, 
and 1605. To the collection thus re-formed a further addition of 
twelve sonnets and a withdrawal of some twelve old sonnets were made 
in the final edition of Drayton's works in 161 9. There the sonnets 
number sixty-three. Mr. Wyndham insists that Drayton's latest pub- 
lished sonnets have alone an obvious resemblance to Shakespeare's 
sonnets, and that they all more or less reflect Shakespeare's sonnets as 
printed by Thorpe in 1 609. But the whole of Drayton's century of sonnets 
except twelve were in print long before 1609, and it could easily be shown 
that the earliest fifty-three published in 1594 supply as close parallels 
with Shakespeare's sonnets as any of the forty-seven published sub- 
sequently. Internal evidence suggests that all but one or two of 
Drayton's sonnets were written by him in 1594, in the full tide of 
the sonnetteering craze. Almost all were doubtless in circulation in 
manuscript then, although only fifty-three were published in 1594. 
Shakespeare would have had ready means of access to Drayton's manu- 
script collection. Mr. Collier reprinted all the sonnets that Drayton 
published between 1594 and 1619 in his edition of Drayton's poems 
for the Roxburghe Club, 1856. Other editions of Drayton's sonnets 
of this and the last century reprint exclusively the collection of sixty- 
three appended to the edition of his works in 161 9. 



THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS III 

sard's nine hundred sonnets and many of his numer- 
ous odes were accessible to Shakespeare in English 
adaptations, but there are a few signs that Shakespeare 
had recourse to Ronsard direct. 

Adapted or imitated conceits are scattered over 
the whole of Shakespeare's collection. They are 
usually manipulated with consummate skill, but 
Shakespeare's indebtedness is not thereby obscured. 
Shakespeare in many beautiful sonnets describes 
spring and summer, night and sleep and their influ- 
ence on amorous emotion. Such topics are com- 
mon themes of the poetry of the Renaissance, and they 
figure in Shakespeare's pages clad in the identical 
livery that clothed them in the sonnets of Petrarch, 
Ronsard, De Baif, and Desportes, or of English 
disciples of the Italian and French masters. 1 In 

1 Almost all sixteenth-century sonnets on spring in the absence of 
the poet's love (cf. Shakespeare's Sonnets xcviii. xcix.) are variations 
on the sentiment and phraseology of Petrarch's well-known sonnet 
xlii., ' In morte di M. Laura,' beginning : 

Zefiro torna e '1 bel tempo rimena, 
E i fiori e l'erbe, sua dolce famiglia, 
E garrir Progne e pianger Filomena, 
E primavera Candida e vermiglia. 

Ridono i prati, e '1 ciel si rasserena; 
Giove s' allegra di mirar sua figlia, 
L' aria e 1' acqua e la terra e d' amor piena; 
Ogni animal d' amar si riconsiglia. 

Ma per me, lasso, tornano i phi gravi 
Sospiri, che del cor profondo tragge, &c. 

See a translation by William Drummond of Hawthornden in Sonnets, 
pt. ii. No. ix. Similar sonnets and odes on April, spring, and summer 
abound in French and English (cf. Becq de Fouquiere's (Euvres choisies 
de J.- A. De Baif, passim, ahd CEuvres choisies des Contemporains de 
Ronsard, p. 108 (by Remy Belleau); p. 129 (by Amadis Jamyn) et 
passim). For descriptions of night and sleep see especially Ronsard's 



112 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Sonnet xxiv. Shakespeare develops Ronsard's conceit 
that his love's portrait is painted on his heart ; and in 
Sonnet cxxii. he repeats something of Ronsard's phra- 
seology in describing how his friend, who has just made 
him a gift of 'tables,' is 'character'd' in his brain. 1 Son- 
net xcix., which reproaches the flowers with stealing 
their charms from the features of his love, is adapted 
from Constable's sonnet to Diana (No. ix.), and maybe 
matched in other collections. Elsewhere Shakespeare 
meditates on the theory that man is an amalgam of the 
four elements, earth, water, air, and fire (xl.-v.). 2 In 
all these he reproduces, with such embellishments as 
his genius dictated, phrases and sentiments of Daniel, 
Drayton, Barnes, and Watson, who imported them 
direct from France and Italy. In two or three instances 
Shakespeare showed his reader that he was engaged 
in a mere literary exercise by offering him alternative 
renderings of the same conventional conceit. In 
Sonnets xlvi. and xlvii. he paraphrases twice over — 
appropriating many of Watson's words — the unexhila- 
rating notion that the eye and heart are in perpetual 
dispute as to which has the greater influence on 

Amours (livre i. clxxxvi., livre ii. xxii.; Odes, livre iv. No. iv., and 
his Odes Retranchees in OEuvres, edited by Blanchemain, ii. 392-4). 
Cf. Barnes's Parthenophe and Parthenophil, lxxxiii. cv. 

1 Cf. Ronsard's Amours, livre clxxviii.; Amours pour Astree, vi. 
The latter opens : 

II ne falloit, mais tresse, autres tablettes 
Pour vous graver que celles de mon coeur 
Ou de sa main Amour, nostre vainqueur, 
Vous a graved et vos graces parfaites. 

2 Cf. Spenser, lv. ; Barnes's Parthenophe and Parthenophil, No. 
lxxvii.; Fulke Greville's Ccelica, No. vii. 



THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS I 1 3 

lovers. 1 In the concluding sonnets, cliii. and cliv., he 
gives alternative versions of an apologue illustrating 
the potency of love which first figured in the Greek 
anthology, had been translated into Latin, and sub- 
sequently won the notice of English, French, and 
Italian sonnetteers. 2 

In the numerous sonnets in which Shakespeare 
Shake- boasted that his verse was so certain of im- 
daimsof mortality that it was capable of immortal- 
taiityfor ising the person to whom it was addressed, 
his sonnets h e gave voice to no conviction that was 

a borrowed ° t 

conceit. peculiar to his mental constitution, to 
no involuntary exaltation of spirit, or spontaneous 

1 A similar conceit is the topic of Shakespeare's Sonnet xxiv. 
Ronsard's Ode (livre iv. No. xx.) consists of a like dialogue between 
the heart and the eye. The conceit is traceable to Petrarch, whose 
Sonnet lv. or lxiii. (' Occhi, piangete, accompagnate il core ') is a dia- 
logue between the poet and his eyes, while his Sonnet xcix. or cxvii. is 
a companion dialogue between the poet and his heart. Cf. Watson's 
Tears of Fancie, xix. xx. (a pair of sonnets on the theme which closely 
resemble Shakespeare's pair) ; Drayton's Idea, xxxiii. ; Barnes's Par- 
thenophe and Parthenophil, xx., and Constable's Diana, vi. 7. 

2 The Greek epigram is in Palatine Anthology, ix. 627, and is 
translated into Latin in Selecta Epigrammata, Basel, 1529. The 
Greek lines relate, as in Shakespeare's sonnets, how a nymph who 
sought to quench love's torch in a fountain only succeeded in heating 
the water. An added detail Shakespeare borrowed from a very recent 
adaptation of the epigram in Giles Fletcher's Licia, 1593 (Sonnet 
xxvii.), where the poet's Love bathes in the fountain, with the result 
not only that ' she touched the water and it burnt with Love,' but also 

Now by her means it purchased hath that bliss 
Which all diseases quickly can remove. 

Similarly Shakespeare in Sonnet cliv. not merely states that the ' cool 
well ' into which Cupid's torch had fallen ' from Love's fire took heat 
perpetual,' but also that it grew ' a bath and healthful remedy for men 
diseased.' 

1 



114 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ebullition of feeling. He was merely proving that 
he could at will, and with superior effect, handle a 
theme that Ronsard and Desportes, emulating Pindar, 
Horace, Ovid, and other classical poets, had lately 
made a commonplace of the poetry of Europe. 1 Sir 
Philip Sidney, in his 'Apologie for Poetrie' (1595), 
wrote that it was the common habit of poets 'to 
tell you that they will make you immortal by their 
verses.' 2 'Men of great calling,' Nash wrote in his 
' Pierce Pennilesse,' 1 593, ' take it of merit to have their 
names eternised by poets.' 3 In the hands of Eliza- 
bethan sonnetteers the ' eternising ' faculty of their 

1 In Greek poetry the topic is treated in Pindar's Oly77ipic Odes, xi., 
and in a fragment by Sappho, No. 1 6 in Bergk's Poeta Lyrici Grceci. 
In Latin poetry the topic is treated in Ennius as quoted in Cicero, 
De Senectute c. 207; in Horace's Odes iii. 30; in Virgil's Georgics 
iii. 9; in Propertius iii. i; in Ovid's Metamorphoses xv. 871 seq. and 
in Martial x. 27 seq. Among French sonnetteers Ronsard attacked the 
theme most boldly. His odes and sonnets promise immortality to the 
persons to whom they are addressed with an extravagant and a 
monotonous liberality. The following lines from Ronsard's Ode (livre 
i. No. vii.), ' Au Seigneur Carnavalet,' illustrate his habitual treatment 
of the theme : 

Les neuf divines pucelles 
Gardent ta gloire chez elles; 
Et mon luth, qu'ell'ont fait estre 



Cest un travail de bon-heur 
Chanter les hommes louables, 
Et leur bastir un honneur 
Seul vainqueur des ans muables. 
Le marbre ou l'airain vestu 
D'un labeur vif par l'enclume 
N'animent tant la vertu 
Que les Muses par la plume. . . 



De leurs secrets le grand prestre, 
Par cest hymne solennel 
Respandra dessus ta race 
Je ne scay quoy de sa grace 
Qui te doit faire eternel. 



(GSttvres de Ronsard, ed. Blanchemain, ii. 58, 62.) 
I quote two other instances from Ronsard on p. 116, note 1. 
Desportes was also prone to indulge in the same conceit; cf. his 
Cleonice, sonnet 62, which Daniel appropriated bodily in his Delia 
(Sonnet xxvi.). Desportes warns his mistress that she will live in his 
verse like the phoenix in fire. 

2 Ed. Shuckburgh, p. 62. 3 Shakespeare Soc. p. 93. 



THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS I 1 5 

verse became a staple and indeed an inevitable topic. 
Spenser wrote in his 'Amoretti' (1595, Sonnet lxxv.): 

My verse your virtues rare shall eternise, 
And in the heavens write your glorious name. 

Drayton and Daniel developed the conceit with 
unblushing iteration. Drayton, who spoke of his 
efforts as 'my immortal song ' (Idea, vi. 14) and 'my 
world-out-wearing rhymes ' (xliv. 7), embodied the 
vaunt in such lines as: 

While thus my pen strives to eternise thee {Idea xliv. 1). 
Ensuing ages yet my rhymes shall cherish (ib. xliv. 11). 
My name shall mount unto eternity (ib. xliv. 14). 
All that I seek is to eternise thee (ib. xlvii. 14). 

Daniel was no less explicit : 

This [sc. verse] may remain thy lasting monument (Delia xxxvii. 9). 

Thou mayst in after ages live esteemed, 

Unburied in these lines (ib. xxxix. 9-10). 

These [sc. my verses] are the arks, the trophies I erect 

That fortify thy name against old age; 

And these [sc. verses] thy sacred virtues must protect 

Against the dark and time's consuming rage (ib. l. 9-12). 

Shakespeare, in his references to his ' eternal 
lines' (xviii. 12) and in the assurances that he gives 
the subject of his addresses that the sonnets are, 
in Daniel's exact phrase, his 'monument' (lxxxi. 9, 
cvii. 13), was merely accommodating himself to the 
prevailing taste. Characteristically in Sonnet lv. 
he invested the topic with a splendour that was not 
approached by any other poet : 1 

1 Other references to the topic appear in Sonnets xix. liv. lx. lxiii. 
Ixv. lxxxi. and cvii. 



Il6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments 

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful rhyme; 1 

But you shall shine more bright in these contents 

Than unswept stone, besmear'd with sluttish time. 

When wasteful war shall statues overturn, 

And broils root out the work of masonry, 

Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire shall burn 

The living record of your memory. 

'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity 

Shall you pace forth; your praise shall still find room, 

Even in the eyes of all posterity 

That wear this world out to the ending doom. 

So, till the judgment that yourself arise, 

You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes. 

The imitative element is no less conspicuous in 
the sonnets that Shakespeare distinctively addresses 

1 See the quotation from Ronsard on p. 114, note I. This sonnet 
is also very like Ronsard's Ode (livre v. No. xxxii.) *A sa Muse,' 

which opens : 

Plus dur que fer j'ay fini mon ouvrage, 
Que 1'an, dispos a demener les pas, 
Que l'eau, le vent ou le brulant orage, 
L'injuriant, ne ru'ront point a bas. 
Quand ce viendra que le dernier trespas 
M'assoupira d'un somme dur, a l'heure, 
Sous le tombeau tout Ronsard n'ira pas 
Restant de luy la part meilleure. . . . 
Sus donque, Muse, emporte au ciel la gloire 
Que j'ay gaignee, annon$ant la victoire 
Dont abon droit je me voy jouissant. . . . 

Cf. also Ronsard's Sonnet lxxii. in Amours (livre i.), where he declares 
that his mistress's name 

Victorieux des peuples et des rois 
S'en voleroit sus l'aile de ma ryme. 

But Shakespeare, like Ronsard, knew Horace's far-famed Ode (bk. iii. 

30) : 

Exegi monumentum sere perennius 
Regalique situ pyramidum altius, 
Quod non imber edax, non Aquilo impotcns 
Possit diruere, aut innumerabilis 
Annorum series, et fuga temporum. 



THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS \\J 

to a woman. In two of the latter (cxxxv.-vi.), where 
he quibbles over the fact of the identity of his own 
name of Will with a lady's ' will ' (the synonym in 
Elizabethan English of both 'lust' and 'obstinacy'), 
he derisively challenges comparison with wire-drawn 
Conceits in conceits of rival sonnetteers, especially of Bar- 
dressed *o~ na ^ e Barnes, wno na d enlarged on his disdain- 
a woman, ful mistress's ' wills,' and had turned the word 
v grace ' to the same punning account as Shakespeare 

Nor can there be any doubt that Shakespeare wrote with a direct 
reference to the concluding ten lines of Ovid's Metamorphoses (xv. 

S7I_9) : T • A T • ' 

Jamque opus exegi, quod nee Jovis ira nee ignes, 

Nee poterit ferrum, nee edax abolere vetustas. 

Cum volet, ilia dies, quae nil nisi corporis hujus 

Jus habet, incerti spatium mihi finiat sevi; 

Parte tamen meliore mei super alta perennis 

Astra ferar nomenque erit indelebile nostrum. 

This passage was familiar to Shakespeare in one of his favourite books 
— Golding's translation of the Metamorphoses. Golding's rendering 
opens : 

Now have I brought a worke to end which neither Jove's fierce wrath 
Nor sword nor fire nor fretting age, with all the force it hath 
Are able to abolish quite, &c. 

Meres, after his mention of Shakespeare's sonnets in his Palladis Tamia 
(1598), quotes parts of both passages from Horace and Ovid, and gives 
a Latin paraphrase of his own, which, he says, would fit the lips of four 
contemporary poets besides Shakespeare. The introduction of the name 
Mars into Meres's paraphrase as well as into line 7 of Shakespeare's 
Sonnet lv. led Mr. Tyler (on what are in any case very trivial grounds) to 
the assumption that Shakespeare was borrowing from his admiring critic, 
and was therefore writing after 1598, when Meres's book was published. 
In Golding's translation reference is made to Mars by name (the Latin 
here calls the god Gradivus) a few lines above the passage already 
quoted, and the word caught Shakespeare's eye there. Shakespeare 
owed nothing to Meres's paraphrase, but Meres probably owed much to 
passages in Shakespeare's sonnets. 



Il8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

turned the word 'will.' 1 Similarly in Sonnet cxxx. 
beginning 

My mistress's eyes are nothing like the sun; 
Coral is far more red than her lips' red . . . 
If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head. 2 

he satirises the conventional lists of precious stones, 
metals, and flowers, to which the sonnetteers likened 
their mistresses' features. 

In two sonnets (cxxvii. and cxxxii.) Shakespeare 
amiably notices the black complexion, hair, and 
The raise e y es °^ ^is mistress, and expresses a pref- 
of • black- erence for features of that hue over those of 
the fair hue which was, he tells us, more 
often associated in poetry with beauty. He com- 
mends the ' dark lady ' for refusing to practise those 
arts by which other women of the day gave their hair 
and faces colours denied them by Nature. Here 
Shakespeare repeats almost verbatim his own lines 
in 'Love's Labour's Lost' (iv. hi. 241-7), where the 
heroine Rosaline is described as 'black as ebony,' 
with 'brows decked in black,' and in 'mourning' for 

1 See Appendix vin., ' The Will Sonnets,' for the interpretation 
of Shakespeare's conceit and like efforts of Barnes. 

2 Wires in the sense of hair was peculiarly distinctive of the 
sonnetteers' affected vocabulary. Cf. Daniel's Delia, 1591, No. xxvi., 
'And golden hair may change to silver wire ;' Lodge's Phillis, 1595, 
' Made blush the beauties of her curled wire ; ' Barnes's Parthenophil, 
sonnet xlviii., ' Her hairs no grace of golden wires want.' The com- 
parison of lips with coral is not uncommon outside the Elizabethan 
sonnet, but it was universal there. Cf. ' Coral-coloured lips ' {Zepheria, 
1594, No. xxiii.) ; ' No coral is her lip ' (Lodge's Phillis, 1595, No. viii.). 
' Ce beau coral ' are the opening words of Ronsard's Amours, livre i. 
No. xxiii., where a list is given of stones and metals comparable with 
women's features. 



THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS 119 

her fashionable sisters' indulgence in the disguising 
arts of the toilet. ' No face is fair that is not full so 
black,' exclaims Rosaline's lover. But neither in the 
sonnets nor in the play can Shakespeare's praise of 
1 blackness ' claim the merit of being his own invention. 
Sir Philip Sidney, in sonnet vii. of his ' Astrophel 
and Stella,' had anticipated it. The ' beams ' of the 
eyes of Sidney's mistress were 'wrapt in colour 
black ' and wore ' this mourning weed ' so 

That whereas black seems beauty's contrary, 
She even in black doth make all beauties flow. 1 

To his praise of 'blackness' in 'Love's Labour's 
Lost ' Shakespeare appends a playful but caustic 
comment on the paradox that he detects in the con- 
ceit. 2 Similarly, the sonnets, in which a dark com- 
plexion is pronounced to be a mark of beauty, are 
followed by others in which the poet argues in self- 
confutation that blackness of feature is hideous in a 
woman, and invariably indicates moral turpitude or 
blackness of heart. Twice, in much the same language 
as had already served a like purpose in the play, does 

1 Shakespeare adopted this phraseology of Sidney literally in both 
the play and the sonnet; while Sidney's further conceit that the lady's 
eyes are in ' this mourning weed ' in order ' to honour all their deaths 
who for her bleed' is reproduced in Shakespeare's Sonnet cxxxii. — one 
of the two under consideration — where he tells his mistress that her eyes 
'have put on black' to become 'loving mourners' of him who is denied 
her love. 

2 O paradox ! Black is the badge of hell, 
The hue of dungeons and the scowl of night (Love's Labour's Lost, iv. iii. 254-5), 
To look like her are chimney-sweepers black, 
And since her time are colliers counted bright, 
And Ethiops of their sweet complexion crack. 
Dark needs no candle now, for dark is light (zb. 266-9),. 



120 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

he mock his ' dark lady ' with this uncomplimentary 
interpretation of dark-coloured hair and eyes. 

The two sonnets, in which this view of 'blackness' 
is developed, form part of a series of twelve, which 
belongs to a special category of sonnetteering effort. 
In them Shakespeare abandons the sugared sentiment 
which characterises most of his hundred and forty-two 
remaining sonnets. He grows vituperative and pours 
The son- a volley of passionate abuse upon a woman 
vftupera- wnom ne represents as disdaining his ad- 
tion. vances. The genuine anguish of a rejected 

lover often expresses itself in curses both loud and deep, 
but the mood of blinding wrath which the rejection of 
a lovesuit may rouse in a passionate nature does 
not seem from the internal evidence to be reflected 
genuinely in Shakespeare's sonnets of vituperation. 
It was inherent in Shakespeare's genius that he should 
import more dramatic intensity than any other poet into 
sonnets of a vituperative type ; but there is also in his 
vituperative sonnets a declamatory parade of figurative 
extravagance which suggests that the emotion is feigned 
and that the poet is striking an attitude. He cannot 
have been in earnest in seeking to conciliate his dis- 
dainful mistress — a result at which the vituperative 
sonnets purport to aim — when he tells her that she 
is ' black as hell, as dark as night,' and with ' so foul 
a face ' is ' the bay where all men ride.' 

But external evidence is more conclusive as to the 
artificial construction of the vituperative sonnets. 
Again a comparison of this series with the efforts of 
the modish sonnetteers assigns to it its true character. 



THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS 121 

Every sonnetteer of the sixteenth century, at some 
point in his career, devoted his energies to vituperation 
of a cruel siren. Ronsard in his sonnets celebrated in 
language quite as furious as Shakespeare's a ' fierce 
tigress,' a 'murderess,' a 'Medusa.' Barnabe Barnes 
affected to contend in his sonnets with a female ' tyrant, ' 
a 'Medusa,' a 'rock.' 'Women' (Barnes laments) 'are by 
nature proud as devils.' The monotonous and artificial 
regularity with which the sonnetteers sounded the vitu- 
perative stop, whenever they had exhausted their notes 
of adulation, excited ridicule in both England and 
France. In Shakespeare's early life the convention was 
wittily parodied by Gabriel Harvey in ' An Amorous 
Odious sonnet intituled The Student's Loove or 
Hatrid, or both or neither, or what shall please the 
Gabriel looving or hating reader, either in sport or 
Harvey's earnest, to make of such contrary passions 
Odious as are here discoursed.' 2 After extolling the 
Sonnet: beauty and virtue of his mistress above that 
of Aretino's Angelica, Petrarch's Laura, Catullus's 
Lesbia, and eight other far-famed objects of poetic 
adoration, Harvey suddenly denounces her in bur- 
lesque rhyme as ' a serpent in brood,' ' a poisonous 
toad,' 'a heart of marble,' and 'a stony mind as 
passionless as a block.' Finally he tells her, 

If ever there were she-devils incarnate, 
They are altogether in thee incorporate. 

In France Etienne Jodelle, a professional sonnet- 

1 The parody, which is not in sonnet form, is printed in Harvey's 
Letter-book (Camden Soc. pp. 101-43). 



122 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

teer although he is best known as a dramatist, made 
T , ., , late in the second half of the sixteenth cen- 

)ouelle s 

•Contr' tury an independent endeavour of like kind to 
stifle by means of parody the vogue of the 
vituperative sonnet. Jodelle designed a collection of 
three hundred sonnets which he inscribed to ' hate of a 
woman,' and he appropriately entitled them ' Contr' 
Amours ' in distinction to ' Amours,' the term applied 
to sonnets in the honeyed vein. Only seven of Jodelle's 
1 Contr' Amours ' are extant, but there is sufficient 
identity of tone between them and Shakespeare's vitu- 
perative efforts almost to discover in Shakespeare's in- 
vectives a spark of Jodelle's satiric fire. 1 The dark lady 

1 No. vii. of Jodelle's Contr 1 Amours runs thus : 

Combien de fois mes vers ont-ils dore 

Ces cheueux noirs dignes d'vne Meduse? 

Combien de fois ce teint noir qui m'amuse, 

Ay-ie de lis et roses colore? 
Combien ce front de rides laboure 

Ay-ie applani? et quel a fait ma Muse 

Le gros sourcil, ou folle elle s'abuse, 

Ay ant sur luy Tare d Amour figure? 
Quel ay-ie fait son ceil se renfon^ant? 

Quel ay-ie fait son grand nez rougissant? 

Quelle sa bouche et ses noires dents quelles? 
Quel ay-ie fait le reste de ce corps? 

Qui, me sentant endurer mille morts, 

Viuoit heureux de mes peines mortelles. 

(Jodelle's (Eitvres, 1597, pp. 91-94.) 

With this should be compared Shakespeare's sonnets exxxvii., cxlviii,, 
and cl. Jodelle's feigned remorse for having lauded the black hair and 
complexion of his mistress is one of the most singular of several strange 
coincidences. In No. vi. of Jodelle's Contr' Amours, Jodelle, after re- 
proaching his ' traitres vers ' with having untruthfully described his 
siren as a beauty, concludes : 

Ja si long temps faisant d'un Diable vn Ange 
Vous m'ouurez l'ceil en l'iniuste louange, 
Et m'aueuglez en l'iniuste tourment. 



THE BORROWED CONCEITS OF THE SONNETS 1 23 

of Shakespeare's ' sonnets ' may therefore be relegated 
to the ranks of the creatures of his fancy. It is quite 
possible that he may have met in real life a dark- 
complexioned siren, and it is possible that he may have 
fared ill at her disdainful hands. But no such incident 
is needed to account for the presence of 'the dark 
lady ' in the sonnets. It was the exacting conventions 
of the sonnetteering contagion, and not his personal 
experiences or emotions, that impelled Shakespeare to 
give ' the dark lady ' of his sonnets a poetic being. 1 
She has been compared, not very justly, with Shake- 
speare's splendid creation of Cleopatra in his play of 

With this should be compared Shakespeare's Sonnet cxliv. lines 9-10 : 

And whether that my angel be turn'd fiend 
Suspect I may, yet not directly tell. 

A conventional sonnet of extravagant vituperation, which Drummond 
of Hawthornden translated from Marino {Rime, 1602, pt. i. p. 76) is 
introduced with grotesque inappropriateness into Drummond's collection 
of ' sugared ' sonnets (see pt. i. No. xxxv. : Drummond's Poems, ed. 
W. C. Ward, i. 69, 217). 

1 The theories that all the sonnets addressed to a woman were 
addressed to the ' dark lady,' and that the ' dark lady ' is identifiable 
with Mary Fitton, a mistress of the Earl of Pembroke, are baseless 
conjectures. The extant portraits of Mary Fitton prove her to be fair. 
The introduction of her name into the discussion is solely due to the 
mistaken notion that Shakespeare was the protege of Pembroke, that 
most of the sonnets were addressed to him, and that the poet was prob- 
ably acquainted with his patron's mistress. See Appendix VII. The 
expressions in two of the vituperative sonnets to the effect that the dis- 
dainful mistress had ' robb'd others' beds' revenues of their rents ' (cxlii. 8) 
and ' in act her bed-vow broke ' (clii. 37) have been held to imply that 
the woman denounced by Shakespeare was married. The first quotation 
can only mean that she was unfaithful with married men, but both 
quotations seem to be general phrases of abuse, the meaning of which 
should not be pressed closely. 



124 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

' Antony and Cleopatra.' From one point of view the 
same criticism may be passed on both. There is no 
greater and no less ground for seeking in Shakespeare's 
personal environment the original of ' the dark lady ' 
of his sonnets than for seeking there the original of his 
Queen of Egypt. 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 1 25 



IX 



THE PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF 
SOUTHAMPTON 

Amid the borrowed conceits and poetic figures of 
Shakespeare's sonnets there lurk suggestive references 
to the circumstances in his external life that attended 
their composition. If few can be safely regarded as 
autobiographic revelations of sentiment, many of them 
offer evidence of the relations in which he stood to a 
patron, and to the position that he sought to fill in 
the circle of that patron's literary retainers. Twenty 
Biographic sonnets, which may for purposes of exposition 
fact in the b e entitled ' dedicatory ' sonnets, are addressed 

' dedica- . 

tory' to one who is declared without periphrasis 

sonnets. anc [ without disguise to be a patron of the 
poet's verse (Nos. xxiii., xxvi., xxxii., xxxvii., xxxviii., 
lxix., lxxvii.-lxxxvi., c, ci., ciii., cvi.). In one of these 
— Sonnet lxxviii. — Shakespeare asserted : 

So oft have I invoked thee for my Muse 
And found such fair assistance in my verse 
As every alien pen hath got my use 
And under thee their poesy disperse. 

Subsequently he regretfully pointed out how his 
patron's readiness to accept the homage of other 



126 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

poets seemed to be thrusting him from the enviable 
place of pre-eminence in his patron's esteem. 

Shakespeare's biographer is under an obligation 
The Earl to attempt an identification of the persons 
of South- whose relations with the poet are defined so 
the poet's explicitly. The problem presented by the 
sole patron. p a t r0 n is simple. Shakespeare states un- 
equivocally that he has no patron but one. 

Sing [sc. O Muse !] to the ear that doth thy lays esteem, 
And gives thy pen both skill and argument (c. 7-8). 
For to no other pass my verses tend 
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell (ciii. 11-12). 

The Earl of Southampton, the patron of his narrative 
poems, is the only patron of Shakespeare that is known 
to biographical research. No contemporary document 
or tradition gives the faintest suggestion that Shake- 
speare was the friend or dependent of any other man 
of rank. A trustworthy tradition corroborates the 
testimony respecting Shakespeare's close intimacy 
with the Earl that is given in the dedicatory epistles 
of his ' Venus and Adonis ' and ' Lucrece,' penned 
respectively in 1593 and 1594. According to Nicho- 
las Rowe, Shakespeare's first adequate biographer, 
' there is one instance so singular in its magnificence 
of this patron of Shakespeare's that if I had not 
been assured that the story was handed down by 
Sir William D'Avenant, who was probably very well 
acquainted with his affairs, I should not venture to 
have inserted ; that my Lord Southampton at one 
time gave him a thousand pounds to enable him to 
go through with a purchase which he heard he had a 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 1 27 

mind to. A bounty very great and very rare at any 
time.' 

There is no difficulty in detecting the lineaments 
of the Earl of Southampton in those of the man 
who is distinctively greeted in the sonnets as the 
poet's patron. Three of the twenty ' dedicatory ' 
sonnets merely translate into the language of poetry 
the expressions of devotion which had already done 
duty in the dedicatory epistle in prose that prefaces 
' Lucrece.' That epistle to Southampton runs: 

The love 1 I dedicate, to your lordship is without end; whereof this 
pamphlet, without beginning, is but a superfluous moiety. The warrant 
I have of your honourable disposition, not the worth of my untutored 
lines, makes it assured of acceptance. What I have done is yours; 
what I have to do is yours; being part of all I have devoted yours. 
Were my worth greater, my duty would show greater; meanwhile, as 
it is, it is bound to your lordship, to whom I wish long life, still 
lengthened with all happiness. 

Your lordship's in all duty, 

William Shakespeare. 

Sonnet xxvi. is a gorgeous rendering of these 
sentences : 

1 ' Lover ' and ' love ' in Elizabethan English were ordinary 
synonyms for ' friend ' and ' friendship.' Brutus opens his address to 
the citizens of Rome with the words, ' Romans, countrymen, and lovers? 
and subsequently describes Julius Caesar as 'my best lover ■' {Julius 
Cczsar, III. ii. 13-49). Portia, when referring to Antonio, the bosom 
friend of her husband Bassanio, calls him ' the bosom lover of my lord ' 
{Merchant of Venice, III. iv. 17), Ben Jonson in his letters to Donne 
commonly described himself as his correspondent's 'ever true lover '; 
and Drayton, writing to William Drummond of Hawthornden, in- 
formed him that an admirer of his literary work was in love with him. 
The word ' love ' was habitually applied to the sentiment subsisting 
between an author and his patron. Nash, when dedicating Jack 
Wilton in 1594 to Southampton, calls him ' a dear lover ... of the 
lovers of poets as of the poets themselves.' 



128 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Lord of my love, to whom in vassalage 

Thy merit hath my duty strongly knit, 

To thee I send this written ambassage, 

To witness duty, not to show my wit : 

Duty so great, which wit so poor as mine 

May make seem bare, in wanting words to show it, 

But that I hope some good conceit of thine 

In thy soul's thought, all naked, will bestow it; 

Till whatsoever star that guides my moving, 

Points on me graciously with fair aspect, 

And puts apparel on my tatter'd loving 

To show me worthy of thy sweet respect; 

Then may I dare to boast how I do love thee; 

Till then not show my head where thou may'st prove me. 1 

The ' Lucrece ' epistle's intimation that the 
patron's love alone gives value to the poet's 'un- 
tutored lines ' is repeated in Sonnet xxxii., which 
doubtless reflected a moment of depression : 

If thou survive my well-contented day, 
When that churl Death my bones with dust shall cover, 
And shalt by fortune once more re-survey 
These poor rude lines of thy deceased lover, 
Compare them with the bettering of the time, 
And though they be outstripp'd by every pen, 
Reserve them for my love, not for their rhyme, 
Exceeded by the height of happier men. 

1 There is little doubt that this sonnet was parodied by Sir John 
Davies in the ninth and last of his ' gulling ' sonnets, in which he 
ridicules the notion that a man of wit should put his wit in vassalage 
to any one. 

To love my lord I do knight's service owe, 

And therefore now he hath my wit in ward ; 

But while it [i.e. the poet's wit] is in his tuition so 

Methinks he doth intreat [i.e. treat] it passing hard . . . 

But why should love after minority 

(When I have passed the one and twentieth year) 

Preclude my wit of his sweet liberty, 

And make it still the yoke of wardship bear ? 

I fear he [i.e. my lord] hath another title [i.e. right to my wit] got 

And holds my wit now for an idiot. 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 1 29 

O, then vouchsafe me but this loving thought : 
' Had my friend's Muse grown with this growing age 
A dearer birth than this his love had brought, 
To march in ranks of better equipage; : 
But since he died and poets better prove, 
Theirs for their style I'll read, his for his love.' 

A like vein is pursued in greater exaltation of spirit 
in Sonnet xxxviii. : 

How can my Muse want subject to invent, 

While thou dost breathe, that pour'st into my verse 

Thine own sweet argument, too excellent 

For every vulgar paper to rehearse? 

O give thyself the thanks, if aught in me 

Worthy perusal stand against thy sight; 

For who's so dumb that cannot write to thee, 

When thou thyself dost give invention light? 

Be thou the tenth Muse, ten times more in worth 

Than those old nine which rhymers invocate; 

And he that calls on thee, let him bring forth 

Eternal numbers to outlive long date. 

If my slight Muse do please these curious days, 
The pain be mine, but thine shall be the praise. 

The central conceit here so finely developed — that 
the patron may claim as his own handiwork the 
protege's verse because he inspires it — belongs to the 
most conventional schemes of dedicatory adulation. 
When Daniel, in 1592, inscribed his volume of sonnets 

1 Mr. Tyler assigns this sonnet to the year 1598 or later, on the 
fallacious ground that this line was probably imitated from an ex- 
pression in Marston's Pigmalion's Image, published in 1598, where 
' stanzas ' are said to ' march rich bedight in warlike equipage.' The 
suggestion of plagiarism is quite gratuitous. The phrase was common 
in Elizabethan literature long before Marston employed it. Nash, in 
his preface to Green's Menaphon, which was published in 1589, wrote 
that the works of the poet Watson ' march in equipage of honour with 
any of your ancient poets.' 

K 



130 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

entitled ' Delia ' to the Countess of Pembroke, he 
played in the prefatory sonnet on the same note, and 
used in the concluding couplet almost the same words 
as Shakespeare. Daniel wrote : 

Great patroness of these my humble rhymes, 

Which thou from out thy greatness dost inspire .... 

O leave [i.e. cease] not still to grace thy work in me .... 

Whereof the travail I may challenge mine, 

But yet the glory, madam, must be thine. 

Elsewhere in the Sonnets we hear fainter echoes 
of the * Lucrece ' epistle. Repeatedly does the son- 
netteer renew the assurance given there that his patron 
is ' part of all ' he has or is. Frequently do we meet 
in the Sonnets with such expressions as these : 

[I] by apart of all your glory live (xxxvii. 12); 
Thou art all the better part of t?ie (xxxix. 2) ; 
My spirit is thine, the better part of me (lxxiv. 8); 

while ' the love without end ' which Shakespeare had 
vowed to Southampton in the light of day reappears 
in sonnets addressed to the youth as ' eternal love ' 
(cviii. 9), and a devotion ' what shall have, no end ' 
(ex. 9). 

The identification of the rival poets whose ' richly 
compiled ' ' comments ' of his patron's ' praise ' ex- 
cited Shakespeare's jealousy is a more difficult 
inquiry than the identification of the patron. The 
rival poets with 'their precious phrase of all the 
Muses filed ' (lxxxv. 4) must be sought among 
Rivals in the writers who eulogised Southampton and 
for?s hamp " are known to have shared his patronage, 
favour. The field of choice is not small. Southampton 
from boyhood cultivated literature and the society of 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 131 

literary men. In 1594 no nobleman received so 
abundant a measure of adulation from the con- 
temporary world of letters. 1 Thomas Nash justly 
described the Earl, when dedicating to him his 
1 Life of Jack Wilton ' in 1594, as 'a dear lover and 
cherisher as well of the lovers of poets as of the 
poets themselves.' Nash addressed to him many 
affectionately phrased sonnets. The prolific sonnet- 
teer Barnabe Barnes and the miscellaneous literary 
practitioner Gervase Markham confessed, respectively 
in 1593 and 1595, yearnings for Southampton's counte- 
nance in sonnets which glow hardly less ardently 
than Shakespeare's with admiration for his personal 
charm. Similarly John Florio, the Earl's Italian tutor, 
who is traditionally reckoned among Shakespeare's 
literary acquaintances, 2 wrote to Southampton in 
1598, in his dedicatory epistle before his 'World of 
Words ' (an Italian-English dictionary), ' as to me 
and many more, the glorious and gracious sunshine 
of your honour hath infused light and life.' 

Shakespeare magnanimously and modestly de- 
scribed XhaX protege' of Southampton, whom he deemed 
a specially dangerous rival, as an ' able ' and a ' better ' 
* spirit,' ' a worthier pen,' a vessel 'of tall building and 
of goodly pride,' compared with whom he was himself 
1 a worthless boat.' He detected a touch of magic in 
the man's writing. His 'spirit,' Shakespeare hyperboli- 
cally declared, had been 'by spirits taught to write 

1 See Appendix IV. for a full account of Southampton's relations 
with Nash and other men of letters- 

2 See p. 85, note. 



132 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

above a mortal pitch,' and ' an affable familiar ghost' 
Shake- nightly gulled him with intelligence. Shake- 
speare's speare's dismay at the fascination exerted 
a rival on his patron by ' the proud full sail of his 
poet. [rival's] great verse ' sealed for a time, he 

declared, the springs of his own invention (lxxxvi.). 

There is no need to insist too curiously on the 
justice of Shakespeare's laudation of 'the other 
poet's ' powers. He was presumably a new-comer in 
the literary field who surprised older men of benevo- 
lent tendency into admiration by his promise rather 
than by his achievement. ' Eloquence and courtesy,' 
wrote Gabriel Harvey at the time, ' are ever bountiful in 
the amplifying vein; ' and writers of amiability, Harvey 
adds, habitually blazoned the perfections that they 
hoped to see their young friends achieve, in language 
implying that they had already achieved them. All 
the conditions of the problem are satisfied by the 
rival's identification with the young poet and scholar 
Barnabe Barnes, a poetic panegyrist of Southampton 
and a prolific sonnetteer, who was deemed by con- 
temporary critics certain to prove a great poet. His 
first collection of sonnets, ' Parthenophil and Parthe- 
nophe,' with many odes and madrigals interspersed, 
was printed in 1593 ; and his second, 'A Centurie of 
Spiritual Sonnets,' in 1595. Loud applause greeted 
the first book, which included numerous adaptations 
from the classical, Italian, and French poets, and dis- 
closed, among many crudities, some fascinating lyrics 
and at least one almost perfect sonnet (No. lxvi., 
' Ah, sweet content, where is thy sweet abode ? ') 






PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 1 33 

Thomas Churchyard called Barnes ' Petrarch's scholar ' ; 
the learned Gabriel Harvey bade him 'go forward in 
maturity as he had begun in pregnancy,' and 'be the 
gallant poet, like Spenser; ' Campion judged his verse 
Bamabe to be 'heady and strong.' In a sonnet that 
DTobabi Barnes addressed in this earliest volume 
the rival, to the ' virtuous ' Earl of Southampton he 
declared that his patron's eyes were 'the heavenly 
lamps that give the Muses light,' and that his sole 
ambition was ' by flight to rise ' to a height worthy 
of his patron's 'virtues.' Shakespeare sorrowfully 
pointed out in Sonnet lxxviii. that his lord's eyes 

Had taught the dumb on high to sing, 
And heavy ignorance aloft to fly, 
Had added feathers to the learned's wing, 
And given grace a double majesty ; 

while in the following sonnet he asserted that the 
' worthier pen ' of his dreaded rival when lending his 
patron 'virtue' was guilty of plagiarism, for he 'stole 
that word' from his patron's 'behaviour.' The em- 
phasis laid by Barnes on the inspiration that he sought 
from Southampton's ' gracious eyes ' on the one hand, 
and his reiterated references to his patron's 'virtue' on 
the other, suggest that Shakespeare in these sonnets 
directly alluded to Barnes as his chief competitor in 
the hotly contested race for Southampton's favours. 
In Sonnet lxxxv. Shakespeare delares that ' he cries 
Amen to every hymn that able spirit [i.e. his rival] 
affords.' Very few poets of the day in England fol- 
lowed Ronsard's practice of bestowing the title of hymn 
on miscellaneous poems, but Barnes twice applies 



134 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

the word to his poems of love. 1 When, too, Shake- 
speare in Sonnet lxxx. employs nautical metaphors to 
indicate the relations of himself and his rival with 
his patron — 

My saucy bark inferior far to his . . . 

Your shallowest help will hold me up afloat, — 

he seems to write with an eye on Barnes's identical 
choice of metaphor : 

My fancy's ship tossed here and there by these [sc. sorrow's floods] 

Still floats in danger ranging to and fro. 

How fears my thoughts' swift pinnace thine hard rock ! 2 

Gervase Markham is equally emphatic in his 
sonnet to Southampton on the potent influence of 
other his patron's 'eyes,' which, he says, crown 

theories as < the mos t victorious pen ' — a possible refer- 
rivai's ence to Shakespeare. Nash's poetic praises 

identity. f ^he Earl are no less enthusiastic, and are 
of a finer literary temper than Markham's. But 
Shakespeare's description of his rival's literary work 
fits far less closely the verse of Markham and Nash 
than the verse of their fellow-aspirant Barnes. 

Many critics argue that the numbing fear of his 
rival's genius and of its influence on his patron to 
which Shakespeare confessed in the sonnets was 
more likely to be evoked by the work of George 
Chapman than by that of any other contemporary 
poet. But Chapman had produced no conspicuously 
'great verse ' till he began his translation of Homer in 
1 598 ; and although he appended in 1610 to a complete 

1 Cf. Parthenophil, Madrigal i. line 12; Sonnet xvii. line 9. 

2 Parthenophil, Sonnet xci. 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 1 35 

edition of his translation a sonnet to Southampton, 
it was couched in the coldest terms of formality, and 
it was one of a series of sixteen sonnets each addressed 
to a distinguished nobleman with whom the writer 
implies that he had no previous relations. 1 Drayton, 

1 Much irrelevance has been introduced into the discussion of 
Chapman's claim to be the rival poet. Professor Minto in his Charac- 
teristics of English Poets, p. 291, argued that Chapman was the man 
mainly because Shakespeare declared his competitor to be taught to 
write by ' spirits ' — 'his compeers by night ' — as well as by ' an affable 
familiar ghost ' which gulled him with intelligence at night (lxxxvi. 5 
seq. ) . Professor Minto saw in these phrases allusions to some remarks by 
Chapman in his Shadows of Night (1594), a poem on Night. There 
Chapman warned authors in one passage that the spirit of literature 
will often withhold itself from them unless it have ' drops of their 
blood like a heavenly familiar,' and in another place sportively invited 
' nimble and aspiring wits ' to join him in consecrating their endeavours 
to 'sacred night.' There is really no connection between Shakespeare's 
theory of the supernatural and nocturnal sources of his rival's influence 
with Chapman's trite allusion to the current faith in the power of 
' nightly familiars ' over men's minds and lives, or in Chapman's invita- 
tion to his literary comrades to honour Night with him. It is superero- 
gatory to assume that Shakespeare had Chapman's phrases in his mind 
when alluding to superstitions which were universally acknowledged. 
It could be as easily argued on like grounds that Shakespeare was 
drawing on other authors. Nash in his prose tract called independently 
The -Terrors of the Night, which was also printed in 1594, described 
the nocturnal habits of ' familiars ' more explicitly than Chapman. 
The publisher Thomas Thorpe, in dedicating in 1600 Marlowe's trans- 
lation of Lucan (bk. i.) to his friend Edward Blount, humorously 
referred to the same topic when he reminded Blount that ' this spirit 
[i.e. Marlowe], whose ghost or genius is to be seen walk the Churchyard 
[of St. Paul's] in at the least three or four sheets . . . was sometime 
a familiar of your own.' On the strength of these quotations, and 
accepting Professor Minto's line of argument, Nash, Thorpe, or Blount, 
whose ' familiar ' is declared to have been no less a personage than 
Marlowe, has as good a claim as Chapman to be the rival poet of 
Shakespeare's sonnets. A second and equally impotent argument in 
Chapman's favour has been suggested. Chapman in his preface to his 



136 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Ben Jonson, and Marston have also been identified 
by various critics with ' the rival poet,' but none of 
these shared Southampton's bounty, nor are the 
terms which Shakespeare applies to his rival's verse 
specially applicable to the productions of any of them. 
Many besides the ' dedicatory ' sonnets are ad- 
dressed to a handsome youth of wealth and rank, for 
whom the poet avows ' love,' in the Elizabethan sense 
of friendship. 1 Although no specific reference is made 
outside the twenty ' dedicatory ' sonnets to the youth 
Sonnets of a s a literary patron, and the clues to his 
friendship, identity are elsewhere vaguer, there is good 
ground for the conclusion that the sonnets of dis- 
interested love or friendship also have Southampton 
for their subject. The sincerity of the poet's senti- 
ment is often open to doubt in these poems, but they 
seem to illustrate a real intimacy subsisting between 
Shakespeare and a young Maecenas. 

translation of the Iliads (1611) denounces without mentioning any name 
'a certain envious windsucker that hovers up and down, laboriously 
engrossing all the air with his luxurious ambition, and buzzing into 
every ear my detraction ' It is suggested that Chapman here retaliated 
on Shakespeare for his references to him as his rival in the sonnets; but it 
is out of the question that Chapman, were he the rival, should have 
termed those high compliments ' detraction.' There is no ground for 
identifying Chapman's ' windsucker ' with Shakespeare (cf. Wyndham, 
p. 255). The strongest point in favour of the theory of Chapman's 
identity with the rival poet lies in the fact that each of the two sections 
of his poem The Shadow of the Night (1594) is styled a 'hymn,' and 
Shakespeare in Sonnet lxxxv. 6-7 credits his rival with writing 
'hymns.' But Drayton, in his Harmonie of the Church, 1591, and 
Barnes, as we have just seen, both wrote 'hymns,' and the word was 
often loosely used in Elizabethan English, as in sixteenth-century French, 
in the general sense of ' poem.' 
1 See p. 127, note 1. 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 1 37 

Extravagant compliment — 'gross painting' Shake- 
speare calls it — was more conspicuous in the inter- 
course of patron and client during the last years of 
Elizabeth's reign than in any other epoch. For this 
result the sovereign herself was in part responsible. 
Contemporary schemes of literary compliment seemed 
infected by the feigned accents of amorous passion 
and false rhapsodies on her physical beauty with 
which men of letters servilely sought to satisfy 
the old Queen's incurable greed of flattery. 1 Sir 

1 Sir Walter Ralegh was wont to apostrophise his aged sovereign 

thus : 

Oh, hopeful love, my object and invention, 

Oh, true desire, the spur of my conceit, 
Oh, worthiest spirit, my mind's impulsion, 

Oh, eyes transparent, my affection's bait; 
Oh, princely form, my fancy's adamant, 

Divine conceit, my pain's acceptance, 
Oh, all in one! Oh, heaven on earth transparent! 

The seat of joy and love's abundance! 

(Cf. Cynthia, a fragment in Poems of Raleigh, ed. Hannah, p. 33.) 
When Ralegh leaves Elizabeth's presence he tells us his ' forsaken 
heart' and his 'withered mind' were 'widowed of all the joys' they 
' once possessed.' Only some 500 lines (the twenty-first book and a 
fragment of another book) survive of Ralegh's poem Cynthia, the whole 
of which was designed to prove his loyalty to the Queen, and all the 
extant lines are in the same vein as those I quote. The complete 
poem extended to twenty-two books, and the lines exceeded 10,000, or 
five times as many as in Shakespeare's sonnets. Richard Barnfield 
in his like-named poem of Cynthia, 1595, and Fulke Greville in sonnets 
addressed to Cynthia, also extravagantly described the Queen's beauty 
and graces. In 1599 Sir John Davies, poet and lawyer, apostrophised 
Elizabeth, who was then sixty-six years old, thus : 
Fair soul, since to the fairest body knit 
You give such lively life, such quickening power, 
Such sweet celestial influences to it 
As keeps it still in youth's immortal flower . . . 
O many, many years may you remain 
A happy angel to this happy land {Nosce Teipsum, dedication). 

Davies published in the same year twenty-six ' Hymnes of Astrea ' on 



I38 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Philip Sidney described with admirable point the 
adulatory excesses to which less exalted patrons were 
habituated by literary dependents. He gave the 
warning that as soon as a man showed interest in 
poetry or its producers, poets straightway pronounced 
him 'to be most fair, most rich, most wise, most all.' 
c You shall dwell upon superlatives . . . Your soule 
shall be placed with Dante's Beatrice.' * The warmth 
of colouring which distinguishes many of the sonnets 
Extrava- that Shakespeare, under the guise of dis- 
gancesof interested friendship, addressed to the youth 

literary . . 

compii- can be matched at nearly all points in the 
mem. adulation that patrons were in the habit of 

receiving from literary dependents in the style that 
Sidney described. 2 

Elizabeth's beauty and graces ; each poem forms an acrostic on the 
words ' Elizabetha Regina,' and the language of love is simulated on 
almost every page. 

1 Apologie for Poetrie (1595), ed. Shuckburgh, p. 62. 

2 Adulatory sonnets to patrons are met with in the preliminary or 
concluding pages of numerous sixteenth and seventeenth century books 
(e.g. the collection of sonnets addressed to James VI of Scotland in his 
Essay es of a Prentise, 1591, and the sonnets to noblemen before Spenser's 
Faerie Queen, at the end of Chapman's Iliad, and at the end of John 
Davies's Microcosmos, 1603). Other sonnets to patrons are scattered 
through collections of occasional poems such as Ben Jonson's Forest 
and Underwoods and Donne's Poems. Sonnets addressed to men are 
not only found in the preliminary pages but are occasionally interpolated 
in sonnet-sequences of fictitious love. Sonnet xi. in Drayton's sonnet- 
fiction called ' Idea ' (in 1599 edition) seems addressed to a man, in much 
the same manner as Shakespeare often addressed his hero ; and a few 
others of Drayton's sonnets are ambiguous as to the sex of their subject. 
John Soothern's eccentric collection of love-sonnets, Pandora (1584), 
has sonnets dedicatory to the Earl of Oxford ; and William Smith in 
his Chloris (1596) (a sonnet-fiction of the conventional kind) in two 
prefatory sonnets and in No. xlix. of the substantive collection invokes 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 1 39 

Shakespeare assured his friend that he should 
never grow old (civ.), that the finest types of beauty 
Patrons an d chivalry in mediaeval romance lived 
addressed again in him (cvi.), that absence from him 
in affec- was misery, anc l that his affection for him was 
terms. unalterable. Hundreds of poets openly gave 

the affectionate notice of Edmund Spenser. Throughout Europe 
' dedicatory ' sonnets or poems to women betray identical charac- 
teristics to those that were addressed to men. The poetic addresses 
to the Countess of Bedford and other noble patronesses of Donne, 
Ben Jonson, and their colleagues are always affectionate, often 
amorous, in their phraseology, and akin in temper to Shakespeare's 
sonnets of friendship. Nicholas Breton, in his poem The Pilgrimage 
to Paradise coyned with the Countess of Pembroke's Love, 1592, and 
another work of his, The Countess of Pembroke's Passion (first printed 
from manuscript in 1867), pays the Countess, who was merely his 
literary patroness, an homage which is indistinguishable from the 
ecstatic utterances of a genuine and overmastering passion. The differ- 
ence in the sex of the persons addressed by Breton and by Shakespeare 
seems to place their poems in different categories, but they both really 
belonged to the same class. They both merely display a protege's 
loyalty to his patron, couched, according to current convention, in the 
strongest possible terms of personal affection. In Italy and France 
exactly the same vocabulary of adoration was applied by authors indif- 
ferently to patrons and patronesses. It is known that one series of 
Michael Angelo's impassioned sonnets was addressed to a young noble- 
man Tommaso dei Cavalieri, and another series to a noble patroness 
Vittoria Colonna, but the tone is the same in both, and internal evidence 
fails to enable the critic to distinguish between the two series. Only 
one English contemporary of Shakespeare published a long series of 
sonnets addressed to a man who does not prove on investigation to have 
been a professional patron. In 1595 Richard Barnfield appended to 
his poem Cynthia a set of twenty sonnets, in which he feignedly 
avowed affection for a youth called Ganymede. These poems do not 
belong to the same category as Shakespeare's, but to the category 
of sonnet-sequences of love in which it was customary to invoke a 
fictitious mistress. Barnfield explained that in his sonnets he attempted 
a variation on the conventional practice by fancifully adapting to the 
sonnet-form the second of Virgil's Eclogues, in which the shepherd 
Coridon apostrophises the shepherd-boy Alexis. 



I40 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

the like assurances to their patrons. Southampton 
was only one of a crowd of Maecenases whose pane- 
gyrists, writing without concealment in their own 
names, credited them with every perfection of mind 
and body, and ' placed them,' in Sidney's apt phrase, 
'with Dante's " Beatrice." ' 

Illustrations of the practice abound. Matthew 
Roydon wrote of his patron, Sir Philip Sidney : 

His personage seemed most divine, 
A thousand graces one might count 
Upon his lovely cheerful eyne. 
To heare him speak and sweetly smile 
You were in Paradise the while. 

Edmund Spenser in a fine sonnet told his patron, 
Admiral Lord Charles Howard, that ' his good per- 
sonage and noble deeds ' made him the pattern to 
the present age of the old heroes of whom ' the antique 
poets ' were ' wont so much to sing.' This compli- 
ment, which Shakespeare turns to splendid account in 
Sonnet cvi., recurs constantly in contemporary sonnets 
of adulation. 1 Ben Jonson apostrophised the Earl of 
Desmond as 'my best-best lov'd.' Campion told Lord 
Walden, the Earl of Suffolk's undistinguished heir, 
that although his muse sought to express his love, 
1 the admired virtues ' of the patron's youth 

Bred such despairing to his daunted Muse 
That it could scarcely utter naked truth. 2 

1 Cf. Sonnet lix : 

Show me your image in some antique book . . . 

O sure I am the wits of former days 

To subjects worse have given admiring praise. 

2 Campion's Poems, ed. Bullen, pp. 148 seq. Cf. Shakespeare's 
sonnets : 

O how I faint when I of you do write. — (lxxx. 1.) 
Finding thy worth a limit past my praise. — (lxxxii. 6.) 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 141 

Dr. John Donne includes among his ' Verse Letters ' 
to patrons and patronesses several sonnets of similar 
temper, one of which, acknowledging a letter of news 
from a patron abroad, concludes thus : 

And now thy alms is given, thy letter's read, 
The body risen again, the which was dead, 
And thy poor starveling bountifully fed. 
After this banquet my soul doth say grace, 
And praise thee for it and zealously embrace 
Thy love, though I think thy love in this case 
To be as gluttons', which say 'midst their meat 
They love that best of which they most do eat. 1 

The tone of yearning for a man's affection is 
sounded by Donne and Campion almost as plaintively 
in their sonnets to patrons as it was sounded by 
Shakespeare. There is nothing, therefore, in the 
vocabulary of affection which Shakespeare employed 
in his sonnets of friendship to conflict with the the- 
ory that they were inscribed to a literary patron with 
whom his intimacy was of the kind normally sub- 
sisting at the time between literary clients and their 
patrons. 

We know Shakespeare had only one literary pa- 
tron, the Earl of Southampton, and the view that that 
nobleman is the hero of the sonnets of ' friendship ' is 
strongly corroborated by such definite details as can 
be deduced from the vague eulogies in those poems 
of the youth's gifts and graces. Every compliment, in 
fact, paid by Shakespeare to the youth, whether it be 

1 Donne's Poe??is (in Muses' Library), ii. 34. See also Donne's 
sonnets and verse-letters to Mr. Rowland Woodward and Mr. I. W. 



142 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

vaguely or definitely phrased, applies to Southampton 
without the least straining of the words. In real life 
Direct beauty, birth, wealth, and wit sat ' crowned ' 
toSoutt^ * n tne Earl, whom poets acclaimed the 
ampton in handsomest of Elizabethan courtiers, as 

the sonnets i ■ i ,1 i r , i , > 

of friend- plainly as in the hero of the poets verse. 
ship. Southampton has left in his correspon- 

dence ample proofs of his literary learning and taste, 
and, like the hero of the sonnets, was ' as fair in 
knowledge as in hue.' The opening sequence of 
seventeen sonnets, in which a youth of rank and 
wealth is admonished to marry and beget a son so 
that ' his fair house ' may not fall into decay, can only 
have been addressed to a young peer like Southamp- 
ton, who was as yet unmarried, had vast possessions, 
and was the sole male representative of his family. 
The sonnetteer's exclamation, ' You had a father, let 
your son say so,' had pertinence to Southampton at 
any period between his father's death in his boyhood 
and the close of his bachelorhood in 1598. To 
no other peer of the day are the words exactly 
applicable. The 'lascivious comment ' on his ' wanton 
sport ' which pursues the young friend through the 
sonnets, and is so adroitly contrived as to add point 
to the picture of his fascinating youth and beauty, 
obviously associates itself with the reputation for sen- 
sual indulgence that Southampton acquired both at 
Court, and, according to Nash, among men of letters. 1 
There is no force in the objection that the 
young man of the sonnets of ' friendship ' must have 
been another than Southampton because the terms 

1 See p. 386, note. 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 1 43 

in which he is often addressed imply extreme youth. 
In 1594, a date to which I refer most of the sonnets, 
His youth- Southampton was barely twenty-one, and 
fulness. the young man had obviously reached 
manhood. In Sonnet civ. Shakespeare notes 
that the first meeting between him and his friend 
took place three years before that poem was written, 
so that, if the words are to be taken literally, the 
poet may have at times embodied reminiscences of 
Southampton when he was only seventeen or eighteen. 1 
But Shakespeare, already worn in worldly experience, 
passed his thirtieth birthday in 1594, and he proba- 
bly tended, when on the threshold of middle life, to 
exaggerate the youthfulness of the nobleman almost 
ten years his junior, who even later impressed his 
acquaintances by his boyish appearance and disposi- 
tion. 2 ' Young ' was the epithet invariably applied 
to Southampton by all who knew anything of him 
even when he was twenty-eight. In 1601 Sir 
Robert Cecil referred to him as the 'poor young 
Earl.' 
. But the most striking evidence of the identity of the 

1 Three years was the conventional period which sonnetteers 
allotted to the development of their passion. Cf. Ronsard, So?i7iets 
pour Helene (No. xiv.), beginning: ' Trois ans sont ja passez que ton 
ceil me tient pris.' 

2 Octavius Caesar at thirty-two is described by Mark Antony after 
the battle of Actium as the ' boy Caesar ' who ' wears the rose of youth ; 
(Antony and Cleopatra, III. ii. 17 seq.). Spenser in his Astrophel 
apostrophises Sir Philip Sidney on his death near the close of his 
thirty-second year as 'oh wretched boy' (1. 133) and 'luckless boy' 
(1. 142). Conversely it was a recognised convention among son- 
netteers to exaggerate their own age. See p. 86, note. 



144 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

youth of the sonnets of ' friendship ' with Southamp- 
~, . ton is found in the likeness of feature and 

1 he evi- 
dence of complexion which characterises the poet's 
portraits, description of the youth's outward appear- 
ance and the extant pictures of Southampton as a 
young man. Shakespeare's many references to his 
youth's 'painted counterfeit' (xvi., xxiv., xlvii., 
lxvii.) suggest that his hero often sat for his portrait. 
Southampton's countenance survives in probably 
more canvases than that of any of his contemporaries. 
At least fourteen extant portraits have been identified 
on good authority — nine paintings, three miniatures 
(two by Peter Oliver and one by Isaac Oliver), and two 
contemporary prints. 1 Most of these, it is true, 

1 Two portraits, representing the Earl in early manhood, are at Wel- 
beck Abbey, and are described above. Of the remaining seven paint- 
ings, two are assigned to Van Somer, and represent the Earl in early 
middle age; one, a half-length, a very charming picture, now belongs to 
James Knowles, Esq., of Queen Anne's Lodge; the other, a full- 
length in drab doublet and hose, is in the Shakespeare Memorial Gal- 
lery at Stratford-on-Avon. Mireveldt twice painted the Earl at a later 
period of his career; one of the pictures is now at Woburn Abbey, ths 
property of the Duke of Bedford, the other is at the National Por- 
trait Gallery. A fifth picture, assigned to Mytens, belongs to Viscount 
Powerscourt; a sixth, by an unknown artist, belongs to Mr. WingfielJ 
Digby, and the seventh (in armour) is in the Master's Lodge at St. John's 
College, Cambridge, where Southampton was educated. The miniature 
by Isaac Oliver, which also represents Southampton in late life, was 
formerly in Dr. Lumsden Propert's collection. It now belongs to a 
collector at Hamburg. The two miniatures assigned to Peter Oliver 
belong respectively to Mr. Jeffery Whitehead and Sir Francis Cook, 
Bart. (Cf. Catalogue of Exhibition of Portrait Miniatures at the Bur- 
lington Fine Arts Club, London, 1889, pp. 32, 71, 100.) In all the best 
preserved of these portraits the eyes are blue and the hair a dark shade 
of auburn. Among the middle-life portraits Southampton appears to 
best advantage in the one by Van Somer belonging to Mr. James Knowles. 





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PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 1 45 

portray their subject in middle age, when the roses 
of youth had faded, and they contribute nothing to the 
present argument. But the two portraits that are 
now at Welbeck, the property of the Duke of Port- 
land, give all the information that can be desired of 
Southampton's aspect ' in his youthful morn.' 2 One 
of these pictures represents the Earl at twenty-one, and 
the other at twenty-five or twenty-six. The earlier 
portrait, which is reproduced on the opposite page, 
shows a young man resplendently attired. His doublet 
is of white satin ; a broad collar, edged with lace, half 
covers a pointed gorget of red leather, embroidered 
with silver thread ; the white trunks and knee-breeches 
are laced with gold ; the sword-belt, embroidered in 
red and gold, is decorated at intervals with white silk 
bows ; the hilt of the rapier is overlaid with gold ; 
purple garters, embroidered in silver thread, fasten the 
white stockings below the knee. Light body armour, 
richly damascened, lies on the ground to the right of 
the figure ; and a white-plumed helmet stands to the 
left on a table covered with a cloth of purple velvet 
embroidered in gold. Such gorgeous raiment suggests 
that its wearer bestowed much attention on his per- 
sonal equipment. But the head is more interesting 
than the body. The eyes are blue, the cheeks pink, 
the complexion clear, and the expression sedate ; 
rings are in the ears ; beard and moustache are at an 
incipient stage, and are of the same bright auburn 
hue as the hair in a picture of Southampton's mother 

1 I describe these pictures from a personal inspection of them which 
the Duke kindly permitted me to make. 

L 



146 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

that is also at Welbeck. 1 But, however scanty is the 
down on the youth's cheek, the hair on his head is 
luxuriant. It is worn very long, and falls over and 
below the shoulder. The colour is now of walnut, 
but was originally of lighter tint. 

The portrait depicting Southampton five or six 
years later shows him in prison, to which he was 
committed after his secret marriage in 1598. A cat 
and a book in a jewelled binding are on a desk at 
his right hand. Here the hair falls over both his 
shoulders in even greater profusion, and is distinctly 
blonde. The beard and thin upturned moustache 
are of brighter auburn and fuller than before, 
although still slight. The blue eyes and colouring 
of the cheeks show signs of ill-health, but differ little 
from those features in the earlier portrait. 

From either of the two Welbeck portraits of 
Southampton might Shakespeare have drawn his 
picture of the youth in the Sonnets. Many times 
does he tell us that the youth is fair in complexion, 
and that his eyes are fair. In Sonnet lxviii., when 
he points to the youth's face as a map of what beauty 
was 'without all ornament, itself and true' — before 
fashion sanctioned the use of artificial ' golden 
tresses' — there can be little doubt that he had in mind 
the wealth of locks that fell about Southampton's neck. 2 

1 Cf. Shakespeare's Sonnet iii. : 

Thou art thy mother's glass, and she in thee 
Calls back the lovely April of her prime. 

2 Southampton's singularly long hair procured him at times un- 
welcome attentions. When, in January 1598, he struck Ambrose 
Willoughby, an esquire of the body, for asking him to break off, 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 1 47 

A few only of the sonnets that Shakespeare 
addressed to the youth can be allotted to a date sub- 
sequent to 1594; only two bear on the surface signs 
of a later composition. In Sonnet lxx. the poet no 
longer credits his hero with juvenile wantonness, 
but with a ' pure, unstained prime,' which has ' passed 
Sonnet by the ambush of young days.' Sonnet 
fast of the cvn -> apparently the last of the series, was 
series. penned almost a decade after the mass of 

its companions, for it makes references that cannot 
be mistaken to three events that took place in 1603 — to 
Queen Elizabeth's death, to the accession of James I, 
and to the release of the Earl of Southampton, who 
had been in prison since he was convicted in 1601 
of complicity in the rebellion of the Earl of Essex. 
The first two events are thus described : 

The mortal moon hath her eclipse endured 
And the sad augurs mock their own presage ; 
Incertainties now crown themselves assured 
And peace proclaims olives of endless age. 

It is in almost identical phrase that every pen in 
the spring of 1603 was felicitating the nation on 
Allusion to t ^ ie unex pected turn of events, by which 
Elizabeth's Elizabeth's crown had passed, without 
civil war, to the Scottish King, and thus 
the revolution that had been foretold as the inevitable 

owing to the lateness of the hour, a game of primero that he was 
playing in the royal chamber at Whitehall, the esquire Willoughby 
is stated to have retaliated by 'pulling off some of the Earl's 
locks.' On the incident being reported to the Queen, she 'gave 
Willoughby, in the presence, thanks for what he did ' {Sydney Papers, 
ii. S3). 



148 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

consequence of Elizabeth's demise was happily averted. 
Cynthia (i.e. the moon) was the Queen's recognised 
poetic appellation. It is thus that she figures in the 
verse of Barnfield, Spenser, Fulke Greville, and 
Ralegh, and her elegists involuntarily followed the 
same fashion. ' Fair Cynthia's dead ' sang one. 

Luna's extinct ; and now beholde the sunne 
Whose beames soake up the moysture of all teares, 

wrote Henry Petowe, in his 'A Fewe Aprill Drops 
Showered on the Hearse of Dead Eliza,' 1603. 
There was hardly a verse-writer who mourned her loss 
that did not typify it, moreover, as the eclipse of a 
heavenly body. One poet asserted that death 'veiled 
her glory in a cloud of night.' Another argued : 
' Naught can eclipse her light, but that her star will 
shine in darkest night.' A third varied the formula 
thus : 

When winter had cast off her weed 
Our sun eclipsed did set. Oh ! light most fair. 1 

At the same time James was constantly said to have 
entered on his inheritance 'not with an olive branch 
in his hand, but with a whole forest of olives round 
about him, for he brought not peace to this kingdom 
alone ' but to all Europe. 2 

'The drops of this most balmy time,' in this same 
sonnet, cvii., is an echo of another current strain of 
fancy. James came to England in a springtide of 
rarely rivalled clemency, which was reckoned of the 

1 These quotations are from Sorr owes Joy, a collection of elegies on 
Queen Elizabeth by Cambridge writers (Cambridge, 1603), and from 
Chettle's England's Mourning Garment (London, 1603). 

2 Gervase Markham's Honour in her Perfection, 1624. 



Allusions 
to South- 
ampton's 



PATRONAGE OF THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON 1 49 

happiest augury. 'All things look fresh,' one poet 
sang, ' to greet his excellence.' ' The air, the seasons, 
and the earth ' were represented as in sym- 
pathy with the general joy in 'this sweetest 
of all sweet springs.' One source of grief 
prison. alone was acknowledged : Southampton was 
still a prisoner in the Tower, ' supposed as forfeit 
to a confined doom.' All men, wrote Manningham, 
the diarist, on the day following the Queen's death, 
wished him at liberty. 1 The wish was fulfilled quickly. 
On April 10, 1603, his prison gates were opened by 
1 a warrant from the king.' So bountiful a beginning 
of the new era, wrote John Chamberlain to Dudley 
Carleton two days later, ' raised all men's spirits, 
. . . and the very poets with their idle pamphlets 
promised themselves ' great things. 2 Samuel Daniel 
and John Davies celebrated Southampton's release 
in buoyant verse. 3 It is improbable that Shake- 
speare remained silent. ' My love looks fresh,' he 
wrote, in the concluding lines of Sonnet cvii., and 
he repeated the conventional promise that he had 
so often made before, that his friend should live in 
his ' poor rhyme,' ' when tyrants' crests and tombs 
of brass are spent.' It is impossible to resist the 
inference that Shakespeare thus saluted his patron 
on the close of his days of tribulation. Shakespeare's 
genius had then won for him a public reputation that 
rendered him independent of any private patron's 

1 Manningham's Diary, Camden Soc, p. 148. 

2 Court and Times of James I, I. i. 7. 

3 See Appendix iv. 



150 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

favour, and he made no further reference in his 
writings to the patronage that Southampton had 
extended to him in earlier years. But the terms in 
which he greeted his former protector for the last 
time in verse, justify the belief that, during his 
remaining thirteen years of life, the poet cultivated 
friendly relations with the Earl of Southampton, and 
was mindful to the last of the encouragement that 
the young peer offered him while he was still on the 
threshold of the temple of fame. 



STORY OF INTRIGUE IN THE SONNETS 1 5 I 



X 



THE SUPPOSED STORY OF INTRIGUE IN THE 
SONNETS 

It is hardly possible to doubt that had Shakespeare, 
who was more prolific in invention than any other 
poet, poured out in his sonnets his personal 
passions and emotions, he would have been carried 
by his imagination, at every stage, far beyond the 
beaten tracks of the conventional sonnetteers of his 
day. The imitative element in his sonnets is large 
enough to refute the assertion that in them as a 
whole he sought to ' unlock his heart.' It is likely 
enough that beneath all the conventional adulation 
bestow r ed by Shakespeare on Southampton there 
lay a genuine affection, but his sonnets to the Earl 
were no involuntary ebullitions of a devoted and 
disinterested friendship ; they were celebrations of a 
patron's favour in the terminology — often raised by 
Shakespeare's genius to the loftiest heights of poe- 
try — that was invariably consecrated to such a pur- 
pose by a current literary convention. Very few of 
Shakespeare's ' sugared sonnets ' have a substantial 
right to be regarded as untutored cries of the soul. 
It is true that the sonnets in which the writer re- 
proaches himself with sin, or gives expression to a 



152 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

sense of melancholy, offer at times a convincing 
illusion of autobiographic confessions; and it is 
just possible that they stand apart from the rest, 
and reveal the writer's inner consciousness, in which 
case they are not to be matched in any other of 
Shakespeare's literary compositions. But they 
may be, on the other hand, merely literary medita- 
tions, conceived by the greatest of dramatists, on 
infirmities incident to all human nature, and only 
attempted after the cue had been given by rival 
sonnetteers. At any rate, their energetic lines are 
often adapted from the less forcible and less coherent 
utterances of contemporary poets, and the themes 
are common to almost all Elizabethan collections of 
sonnets. 1 Shakespeare's noble sonnet on the ravages 
of lust (cxxix.), for example, treats with marvellous 
force and insight a stereotyped theme of sonnetteers, 

1 The fine exordium of Sonnet cxix. : 

What potions have I drunk of Siren tears, 
Distill'd from limbecks foul as hell within, 

adopts expressions in Barnes's vituperative sonnet (No. xlix.), where, 

after denouncing his mistress as a ' siren,' the poet incoherently 

ejaculates : 

From my love's limbeck [sc. have I] still [di]stilled tears! 

Almost every note in the scale of sadness or self-reproach is sounded 
from time to time in Petrarch's sonnets. Tasso in Scelta delle Rime, 
1582, part ii. p. 26, has a sonnet (beginning ' Vinca fortuna homai, se 
sotto il peso ') which adumbrates Shakespeare's Sonnets xxix. (' When 
in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes') and lxvi. ('Tired with all 
these, for restful death I cry'). Drummond of Hawthornden trans- 
lated Tasso's sonnet in his sonnet (part i. No. xxxiii.) ; while Drum- 
mond's Sonnets xxv. (' What cruel star into this world was brought ') 
and xxxii. (' If crost with all mishaps be my poor life ') are pitched in 
the identical key. 



STORY OF INTRIGUE IN THE SONNETS 153 

and it may have owed its whole existence to Sir 
Philip Sidney's sonnet on ' Desire.' : 

Only in one group, composed of six sonnets scat- 
tered through the collection, is there traceable a 
strand of wholly original sentiment, not to be readily 
defined, and boldly projecting from the web into 
which it is wrought. This series of six sonnets deals 
with a love adventure of no normal type. Sonnet 
cxliv. opens with the lines : 

Two loves I have of comfort and despair 

Which like two angels do suggest {i.e. tempt) me still : 

The better angel is a man right fair, 

The worser spirit a woman colour'd ill. 2 

The woman, the sonnetteer continues, has corrupted 
the man and has drawn him from his ' side.' Five 
The p other sonnets treat the same theme. In 
relations three addressed to the man (xl., xli., and 
with the xlii.) the poet mildly reproaches his youthful 
mistress. friend for having sought and w r on the favours 
of a woman whom he himself loved ' dearly,' but the 
trespass is forgiven on account of the friend's youth and 

1 Sidney's Certain Sonnets (No. xiii.) appended to Astrophel and 
Stella in the edition of 1598. In Emaricdnlfe : Sonnets written by 
E. C, 1595, Sonnet xxxvii. beginning 'O lust, of sacred love the foul 
corrupter,' even more closely resembles Shakespeare's sonnet in both 
phraseology and sentiment. E. C.'s rare volume is reprinted in the 
Lamport Garland (Roxburghe Club), 1881. 

2 Even this sonnet is adapted from Drayton. See Sonnet xxii. in 

1599 edition: 

An evil spirit your beauty haunts me still . . . 

Thus am I still provoked to every evil 

By this good-wicked spirit, sweet Angel-Devil. 

But Shakespeare entirely alters the point of the lines by contrasting the 
influence exerted on him by the woman with that exerted on him by a 
man. 



* 



154 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

beauty. In the two remaining sonnets Shakespeare 
addresses the woman (cxxxiii. and cxxxiv.), and he 
rebukes her for having enslaved not only himself but 
1 his next self ' — his friend. Shakespeare, in his 
denunciation elsewhere of a mistress's disdain of his 
advances, assigns her blindness, like all the profes- 
sional sonnetteers, to no better denned cause than 
the perversity and depravity of womankind. In these 
six sonnets alone does he categorically assign his 
mistress's alienation to the fascinations of a dear friend 
or hint at such a cause for his mistress's infidelity. 
The definite element of intrigue that is developed here 
is not found anywhere else in the range of Elizabethan 
sonnet-literature. The character of the innovation 
and its treatment seem only capable of explanation by 
regarding it as a reflection of Shakespeare's personal 
experience. But how far he is sincere in his accounts 
of his sorrow in yielding his mistress to his friend in 
order to retain the friendship of the latter must be 
decided by each reader for himself. If all the words 
be taken literally, there is disclosed an act of self- 
sacrifice that it is difficult to parallel or explain. But it 
remains very doubtful if the affair does not rightly be- 
long to the annals of gallantry. The sonnetteer's com- 
placent condonation of the young man's offence chiefly 
suggests the deference that was essential to the main- 
tenance by a dependent of peaceful relations with a 
self-willed and self-indulgent patron. Southampton's 
sportive and lascivious temperament might easily impel 
him to divert to himself the attention of an attractive 
woman by whom he saw that his poet was fascinated, 



STORY OF INTRIGUE IN THE SONNETS 1 55 

and he was unlikely to tolerate any outspoken protest 
on the part of his proteg/. There is no clue to the lady's 
identity, and speculation on the topic is useless. She 
may have given Shakespeare hints for his pictures of 
the ' dark lady,' but he treats that lady's obduracy 
conventionally, and his vituperation of her sheds no 
light on the personal history of the mistress who left 
him for his friend. 

The emotions roused in Shakespeare by the episode, 
even if potent at the moment, were not likely to be 
deep-seated or enduring. And it is possible that a half- 
jesting reference, which would deprive Shakespeare's 
amorous adventure of serious import, was made to it 
by a literary comrade in a poem that was licensed for 
publication on September 3, 1594, and was published 
• wmobie immediately under the title of ' Willobie his 
hisAvisa: a visa, or the True Picture of a Modest 
Maid and of a Chaste and Constant Wife.' 1 In this 
volume, which mainly consists of seventy-two cantos 
in varying numbers of six-line stanzas, the chaste 
heroine, Avisa, holds converse — in the opening sec- 
tion as a maid, and in the later section as a wife — 
with a series of passionate adorers. In every case 
she firmly repulses their advances. Midway through 
the book its alleged author — Henry Willobie — is 
introduced in his own person as an ardent admirer, 
and the last twenty-nine of the cantos rehearse his 
woes and Avisa's obduracy. To this section there is 

1 The work was reprinted by Dr. Grosart in his Occasional Issues, 
1880, and extracts from it appear in the New Shakspere Society's 
'Allusion Books,' i. 169 seq. 



156 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

prefixed an argument in prose (canto xliv.). It is there 
stated that Willobie, ' being suddenly affected with the 
contagion of a fantastical wit at the first sight of Avisa, 
pineth a while in secret grief. At length, not able any 
longer to endure the burning heat of so fervent a 
humour, [he] bewrayeth the secrecy of his disease unto 
his familiar friend W. S., who not long before had tried 
the courtesy of the like passion and was now newly re- 
covered of the like infection. Yet [W. S.], finding his 
friend let blood in the same vein, took pleasure for a 
time to see him bleed, and instead of stopping the issue, 
he enlargeth the wound with the sharp razor of willing 
conceit,' encouraging Willobie to believe that Avisa 
would ultimately yield 'with pains, diligence, and some 
cost in time.' * The miserable comforter ' [W. S.], the 
passage continues, was moved to comfort his friend 
' with an impossibility,' for one of two reasons. Either 
he ' now would secretly laugh at his friend's folly ' 
because he ' had given occasion not long before unto 
others to laugh at his own.' Or ' he would see whether 
another could play his part better than himself, and, 
in viewing after the course of this loving comedy,' 
would ' see whether it would sort to a happier end 
for this new actor than it did for the old actor. But 
at length this comedy was like to have grown to 
a tragedy by the weak and feeble estate that H. W. 
was brought unto,' owing to Avisa's unflinching 
rectitude. Happily, ' time and necessity ' effected a 
cure. In two succeeding cantos in verse W. S. is in- 
troduced in dialogue with Willobie, and he gives him, 
in oratio recta) light-hearted and mocking counsel 



STORY OF INTRIGUE IN THE SONNETS 1 57 

which Wiliobie accepts with results disastrous to his 
mental health. 

Identity of initials, on which the theory of Shake- 
speare's identity with H. W.'s unfeeling adviser mainly 
rests, is not a strong foundation, 1 and doubt is justi- 
fiable as to whether the story of ' Avisa ' and her lovers 
is not fictitious. In a preface signed Hadrian Dorell, 
the writer, after mentioning that the alleged author 
(Wiliobie) was abroad, discusses somewhat enigmati- 
cally whether or no the work is ' a poetical fiction.' In 
a new edition of 1 596 the same editor decides the ques- 
tion in the affirmative. But Dorell, while making this 
admission, leaves untouched the curious episode of 
' W. S.' The mention of ' W. S.' as ' the old actor,' and 
the employment of theatrical imagery in discussing 
his relations with Wiliobie, must be coupled with the 
fact that Shakespeare, at a date when mentions of 
him in print were rare, was eulogised by name as the 
author of ' Lucrece ' in some prefatory verses to the 
volume. From such considerations the theory of 
'W. S.V identity with Willobie's acquaintance ac- 
quires substance. If we assume that it was Shake- 
speare who took a roguish delight in watching his 
friend Wiliobie suffer the disdain of ' chaste Avisa ' 
because he had ' newly recovered ' from the effects of 

1 W. S. are common initials, and at least two authors bearing them 
made some reputation in Shakespeare's day. There was a dramatist 
named Wentworth Smith (see p. 180, infra), and there was a William 
Smith who published a volume of love-lorn sonnets called Chloris in 
1595. A specious argument might possibly be devised in favour of the 
latter's identity with Willobie's counsellor. But Shakespeare, of the 
two, has the better claim, 



158 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

a like experience, it is clear that the theft of Shake- 
speare's mistress by another friend did not cause him 
deep or lasting distress. The allusions that were 
presumably made to the episode by the author of 
' Avisa ' bring it, in fact, nearer the confines of comedy 
than of tragedy. 

The processes of construction which are discernible 
in Shakespeare's sonnets are thus seen to be identical 
Summary ^vith those that are discernible in the rest of 
ofconciu- hi s literary work. They present one more 

sions re- 

spectingthe proof of his punctilious regard for the de- 
sonnets, mands of public taste, and of his marvellous 
genius and skill in adapting and transmuting for his 
own purposes the labours of other workers in the field 
that for the moment engaged his attention. Most of 
Shakespeare's sonnets were produced in 1594 under 
the incitement of that freakish rage for sonnetteering 
which, taking its rise in Italy and sweeping over France 
on its way to England, absorbed for some half-dozen 
years in this country a greater volume of literary 
energy than has been applied to sonnetteering within 
the same space of time here or elsewhere before or since. 
The thousands of sonnets that were circulated in Eng- 
land between 1591 and 1597 were of every literary 
quality, from sublimity to inanity, and they illustrated 
in form and topic every known phase of sonnetteering 
activity. Shakespeare's collection, which was put to- 
gether at haphazard and published surreptitiously many 
years after the poems were written, was a medley, at 
times reaching heights of literary excellence that none 



STORY OF INTRIGUE IN THE SONNETS 1 59 

other scaled, but as a whole reflecting the varied feat- 
ures of the sonnetteering vogue. Apostrophes to meta- 
physical abstractions, vivid picturings of the beauties 
of nature, adulation of a patron, idealisation of a 
protege's regard for a nobleman in the figurative lan- 
guage of amorous passion, amiable compliments on a 
woman's hair or touch on the virginals, and vehement 
denunciation of the falseness and frailty of womankind 
— all appear as frequently in contemporary collections 
of sonnets as in Shakespeare's. He borrows very 
many of his competitors' words and thoughts, but he so 
fused them with his fancy as often to transfigure them. 
Genuine emotion or the writer's personal experience 
very rarely inspired the Elizabethan sonnet, and Shake- 
speare's sonnets proved no exception to the rule. A 
personal note may have escaped him involuntarily in 
the sonnets in which he gives voice to a sense of melan- 
choly and self-remorse, but his dramatic instinct never 
slept, and there is no proof that he is doing more in 
those sonnets than produce dramatically the illusion of 
a personal confession. Only in one scattered series of 
six sonnets, where he introduced a topic, unknown to 
other sonnetteers, of a lover's supersession by his friend 
in a mistress's graces, does he seem to show indepen- 
dence of his comrades and draw directly on an incident 
in his own life, but even there the emotion is wanting 
in seriousness. The sole biographical inference de- 
ductible from the sonnets is that at one time in his career 
Shakespeare disdained no weapon of flattery in an 
endeavour to monopolise the bountiful patronage of a 
young man of rank. External evidence agrees with 



160 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

internal evidence in identifying the belauded patron 
with the Earl of Southampton, and the real value to a 
biographer of Shakespeare's sonnets is the corrobora- 
tion they offer of the ancient tradition that the Earl of 
Southampton, to whom his two narrative poems were 
openly dedicated, gave Shakespeare at an early period 
of his literary career help and encouragement, which 
entitles the Earl to a place in the poet's biography 
resembling that filled by the Duke Alfonso D'Este in 
the biography of Ariosto, or like that filled by Margaret, 
duchess of Savoy, in the biography of Ronsard. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER l6l 



XI 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 

But, all the while that Shakespeare was fancifully 
assuring his patron 

[How] to no other pass my verses tend 
Than of your graces and your gifts to tell, 

his dramatic work was steadily advancing. To the 
'Mid- winter season of 1595 probably belongs 

SnST ' Midsummer Night's Dream.' 1 The comedy 
Dream. 1 may well have been written to celebrate 
a marriage — perhaps the marriage of the universal 
patroness of poets, Lucy Harington, to Edward 
Russell, third Earl of Bedford, on December 12, 
1594; or that of William Stanley, Earl of Derby, 
at. Greenwich on January 24, 1594-5. The elaborate 
compliment to the Queen, ' a fair vestal throned by 
the west ' (11. i. 157 seq.), was at once an acknowledg- 
ment of past marks of royal favour and an invitation 
for their extension to the future. Oberon's fanciful 
description (11. ii. 148-68) of the spot where he saw 
the little western flower called ' Love-in-idleness ' that 
he bids Puck fetch for him, has been interpreted as 
a reminiscence of one of the scenic pageants with 

x No edition appeared before 1600, and then two were published. 
M 



1 62 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

which the Earl of Leicester entertained Queen 
Elizabeth on her visit to Kenilworth in 1575. 1 The 
whole play is in the airiest and most graceful vein 
of comedy. Hints for the story can be traced to a 
variety of sources — to Chaucer's ' Knight's Tale,' to 
Plutarch's ' Life of Theseus,' to Ovid's ' Metamor- 
phoses ' (bk. iv.), and to the story of Oberon, the 
fairy-king, in the French mediaeval romance of ' Huon 
of Bordeaux,' of which an English translation by 
Lord Berners was first printed in 1534. The influ- 
ence of John Lyly is perceptible in the raillery in 
which both mortals and immortals indulge. In the 
humorous presentation of the play of ' Pyramus and 
Thisbe ' by the ' rude mechanicals ' of Athens, Shake- 
speare improved upon a theme which he had already 
employed in ' Love's Labour's Lost.' But the final 
scheme of the ' Midsummer Night's Dream ' is of the 
author's freshest invention, and by endowing — prac- 
tically for the first time in literature — the phantoms 
of the fairy world with a genuine and a sustained 
dramatic interest, Shakespeare may be said to have 
conquered a new realm for art. 

More sombre topics engaged him in the comedy 
of 'All's Well that Ends Well,' which may be ten- 
« All's tatively assigned to 1595. Meres, writing 

Weil.' three years later, attributed to Shakespeare 

a piece called ' Love's Labour's Won.' This title, 
which is not otherwise known, may well be applied 

1 Oberon 's Vision, by the Rev. W. J. Halpin (Shakespeare Society), 
1843. Two accounts of the Kenilworth fetes, by George Gascoigne 
and Robert Laneham respectively, were published in 1576. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 1 63 

to 'All's Well.' 'The Taming of The Shrew,' which 
has also been identified with ' Love's Labour's Won,' 
has far slighter claim to the designation. The plot 
of 'All's Well,' like that of 'Romeo and Juliet,' was 
drawn from Painter's ' Palace of Pleasure ' (No. 
xxxviii.). The original source is Boccaccio's ' Deca- 
merone ' (giorn. iii. nov. 9). Shakespeare, after his 
wont, grafted on the touching story of Helena's love 
for the unworthy Bertram the comic characters of the 
braggart Parolles, the pompous Lafeu, and a clown 
(Lavache) less witty than his compeers. Another 
original creation, Bertram's mother, Countess of 
Roussillon, is a charming portrait of old age. In 
frequency of rhyme and other metrical characteristics 
the piece closely resembles ' The Two Gentlemen,' 
but the characterisation betrays far greater power, 
and there are fewer conceits or crudities of style. 
The pathetic element predominates. The heroine 
Helena, whose ' pangs of despised love ' are expressed 
with touching tenderness, ranks with the greatest of 
Shakespeare's female creations. 

. ' The Taming of The Shrew ' — which, like ' All's 
Well,' was first printed in the folio — was probably 
composed soon after the completion of that solemn 
comedy. It is a revision of an old play on lines 
somewhat differing from those which Shakespeare 
'Tamin ^ad followed previously. From 'The 
of The Taming of A Shrew,' a comedy first pub- 
lished in 1594, 1 Shakespeare drew the In- 
duction and the scenes in which the hero Petruchio 

1 Reprinted by the Shakespeare Society in 1844. 



164 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

conquers Catherine the Shrew. He first infused into 
them the genuine spirit of comedy. But while follow- 
ing the old play in its general outlines, Shakespeare's 
revised version added an entirely new underplot — 
the story of Bianca and her lovers, which owes 
something to the ' Supposes ' of George Gascoigne, 
an adaptation of Ariosto's comedy called ' Gli Sup- 
positi.' Evidence of style — the liberal introduction 
of tags of Latin and the exceptional beat of the dog- 
gerel — makes it difficult to allot the Bianca scenes 
to Shakespeare ; those scenes were probably due to a 
coadjutor. 

The Induction to ' The Taming of The Shrew ' has 
a direct bearing on Shakespeare's biography, for the 
poet admits into it a number of literal references to 
Stratford and his native county. Such personalities are 
rare in Shakespeare's plays, and can only be paralleled 
in two of slightly later date — the ' Second Part 
of Henry IV ' and the ' Merry Wives of Windsor.' 
All these local allusions may well be attributed to 
such a renewal of Shakespeare's personal relations 
Stratford with the town as is indicated by external 
fathe°in- f acts i n his history of the same period, 
duction. In the Induction the tinker, Christopher 
Sly, describes himself as ' Old Sly's son of Burton 
Heath.' Burton Heath is Barton-on-the-Heath, 
the home of Shakespeare's aunt, Edmund Lambert's 
wife, and of her sons. The tinker in like vein 
confesses that he has run up a score with Marian 
Hacket, the fat alewife of Wincot. 1 The references 

1 All these details are of Shakespeare's invention, and do not figure 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 1 65 

to Wincot and the Hackets are singularly precise. 
The name of the maid of the inn is given as Cicely 
Hacket, and the alehouse is described in the stage 
direction as ' on a heath.' 

Wincot was the familiar designation of three 
small Warwickshire villages, and a good claim has 
been set up on behalf of each to be the scene of 
Sly's drunken exploits. There is a very small hamlet 
named Wincot within four miles of Stratford, 
now consisting of a single farmhouse which 
was once an Elizabethan mansion ; it is situated 
on what was doubtless in Shakespeare's day, before 
the land there was enclosed, an open heath. This 
Wincot forms part of the parish of Quinton, where, 
according to the parochial registers, a Hacket family 
resided in Shakespeare's day. On November 21, 
1 591, 'Sara Hacket, the daughter of Robert Hacket,' 
was baptised in Quinton church. 1 Yet by Warwick- 
shire contemporaries the Wincot of 'The Taming of 
The Shrew ' was unhesitatingly identified with Wilne- 
cote, near Tamworth, on the Staffordshire border of 
Warwickshire, at some distance from Stratford. That 

in the old play. But in the crude induction in the old play the non- 
descript drunkard is named without prefix ' She.' That surname, 
although it was very common at Stratford and in the neighbourhood, 
was borne by residents in many other parts of the country, and its ap- 
pearance in the old play is not in itself, as has been suggested, suffi- 
cient to prove that the old play was written by a Warwickshire man. 
There are no other names or references in the old play that can be 
associated with Warwickshire. 

1 Mr. Richard Savage, the secretary and librarian of the Birth- 
place Trustees at Stratford, has generously placed at my disposal this 
interesting fact, which he lately discovered. 



1 66 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

village, whose name was pronounced ' Wincot,' was 
celebrated for its ale in the seventeenth century, a 
distinction which is not shown by contemporary 
evidence to have belonged to any place of like name. 
The Warwickshire poet, Sir Aston Cokain, within 
half a century of the production of Shakespeare's 
'Taming of The Shrew,' addressed to 'Mr. Clement 
Fisher of Wincott ' (a well-known resident at Wilne- 
cote) verses which begin 

Shakspeare your Wincot ale hath much renowned, 
That fox'd a Beggar so (by chance was found 
Sleeping) that there needed not many a word 
To make him to believe he was a Lord. 

In the succeeding lines the writer promises to visit 
4 Wincot ' (i.e. Wilnecote) to drink 

Such ale as Shakspeare fancies 
Did put Kit Sly into such lordly trances. 

It is therefore probable that Shakespeare con- 
sciously invested the home of Kit Sly and of Kit's 
hostess with characteristics of Wilnecote as well as 
of the hamlet near Stratford. 

Wilmcote, the native place of Shakespeare's 
mother, is also said to have been popularly pronounced 
'Wincot.' A tradition which was first recorded by 
Capell as late as 1780 in his notes to 'The Taming 
of The Shrew ' (p. 26) is to the effect that Shakespeare 
often visited an inn at 'Wincot' to enjoy the society 
of a 'fool who belonged to a neighbouring mill,' and 
the Wincot of this story is, we are told, locally asso- 
ciated with the village of Wilmcote. But the links 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 1 67 

that connect Shakespeare's tinker with Wilmcote are 
far slighter than those which connect him with Win- 
cot and Wilnecote. 

The mention of Kit Sly's tavern comrades — 

Stephen Sly and old John Naps of Greece, 
And Peter Turf and Henry Pimpernell — 

was in all likelihood a reminiscence of contemporary 
Warwickshire life as literal as the name of the 
hamlet where the drunkard dwelt. There was a 
genuine Stephen Sly who was in the dramatist's day 
a self-assertive citizen of Stratford ; and ' Greece,' 
whence 'old John Naps' derived his cognomen, is an 
obvious misreading of Greet, a hamlet by Winchmere 
in Gloucestershire, not far removed from Shake- 
speare's native town. 

In 1597 Shakespeare turned once more to English 
history. From Holinshed's ' Chronicle,' and from a 
, valueless but very popular piece, ' The 
Famous Victories of Henry V,' which was 
repeatedly acted between 1588 and 1595, 1 he worked 
up with splendid energy two plays on the reign of 
Henry IV. They form one continuous whole, but 
are known respectively as parts i. and ii. of ' Henry 
IV.' The ' Second Part of Henry IV ' is almost 
as rich as the Induction to ' The Taming of The 
Shrew ' in direct references to persons and districts 
familiar to Shakespeare. Two amusing scenes pass 
at the house of Justice Shallow in Gloucestershire, 
a county which touched the boundaries of Strat- 

1 It was licensed for publication in 1594, and published in 1598. 



1 68 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ford (m. ii. and v. L). When, in the second of these 
scenes, the justice's factotum, Davy, asked his master 
'to countenance William Visor of Woncot 1 against 
Clement Perkes of the Hill,' the local references are 
unmistakable. Woodmancote, where the family of 
Visor or Vizard has nourished since the sixteenth 
century, is still pronounced Woncot. The adjoining 
Stinchcombe Hill (still familiarly known to natives as 
1 The Hill ') was in the sixteenth century the home of 
the family of Perkes. Very precise too are the allu- 
sions to the region of the Cotswold Hills, which were 
easily accessible from Stratford. ' Will Squele, a 
Cotswold man,' is noticed as one of Shallow's friends 
in youth (hi. ii. 23); and when Shallow's servant Davy 
receives his master's instructions to sow ' the head- 
land ' 'with red wheat,' in the early autumn, there is 
an obvious reference to the custom almost peculiar 
to the Cotswolds of sowing 'red lammas' wheat at an 
unusually early season of the agricultural year. 2 

The kingly hero of the two plays of ' Henry IV ' 
had figured as a spirited young man in ' Richard II ' ; 
he was now represented as weighed down by care 
and age. With him are contrasted (in part i.) his 
impetuous and ambitious subject Hotspur and (in 

1 The quarto of 1600 reads Woncote : all the folios read Woncot. 
Yet M alone in the Variorum of 1803 introduced the new and un- 
warranted reading of Wincot, which has been unwisely adopted by 
succeeding editors. 

2 These references are convincingly explained by Mr. Justice Mad- 
den in his Diary of Master Silence, pp. 87 seq., 372-4. Cf. Blunt's 
Dursley and its Neighbourhood ; Huntley's Glossary of the Cotszvold 
Dialect, and Marshall's Rural Economy of Cotswold (1796). 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 169 

both parts) his son and heir Prince Hal, whose 
boisterous disposition drives him from Court to seek 
adventures among the haunters of taverns. Hotspur 
is a vivid and fascinating portrait of a hot-headed 
soldier, courageous to the point of rashness, and 
sacrificing his life to his impetuous sense of honour. 
Prince Hal, despite his vagaries, is endowed by the 
dramatist with far more self-control and common 
sense. 

On the first, as on every subsequent, production of 
1 Henry IV ' the main public interest was concentrated 
neither on the King nor on his son, nor on Hotspur, 
but on the chief of Prince Hal's riotous companions. 
At the outset the propriety of that great creation 
was questioned on a political or historical ground of 
doubtful relevance. Shakespeare in both parts of 
'Henry IV originally named the chief of the prince's 
associates after Sir John Oldcastle, a character in the 
old play. But Henry Brooke, eighth Lord Cobham, 
who succeeded to the title early in 1597, and claimed 
descent from the historical Sir John Oldcastle, the 
Lollard leader, raised objection ; and when the first 
part of the play was printed by the acting-company's 
authority in 1598 ('newly corrected' in 1599), Shake- 
speare bestowed on Prince Hal's tun-bellied 
follower the new and deathless name of 
Falstaff. A trustworthy edition of the second part 
of ' Henry IV ' also appeared with Falstaff' s name 
substituted for that of Oldcastle in 1600. There the 
epilogue expressly denied that Falstaff had any char- 
acteristic in common with the martyr Oldcastle, 



I/O WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

' Oldcastle died a martyr, and this is not the man.' 
But the substitution of the name 'Falstaff' did not pass 
without protest. It hazily recalled Sir John Fastolf, 
an historical warrior who had already figured in 
' Henry VI ' and was owner at one time of the Boar's 
Head Tavern in Southwark ; according to traditional 
stage directions, 1 the prince and his -companions in 
' Henry IV,' frequent the Boar's Head, Eastcheap. 
Fuller in his ' Worthies,' first published in 1662, while 
expressing satisfaction that Shakespeare had ' put 
out ' of the play Sir John Oldcastle, was eloquent 
in his avowal of regret that ' Sir John Fastolf was 
' put in,' on the ground that it was making over 
bold with a great warrior's memory to make him a 
' Thrasonical puff and emblem of mock-valour.' 

The offending introduction and withdrawal of 
Oldcastle's name left a curious mark on literary 
history. Humbler dramatists (Munday, Wilson, 
Drayton, and Hathaway), seeking to profit by the 
attention drawn by Shakespeare to the historical 
Oldcastle, produced a poor dramatic version of Old- 
castle's genuine history; and of two editions of 'Sir 
John Oldcastle' published in 1600, one printed for 
T [nomas] P[avier] was impudently described on the 
title-page as by Shakespeare. 

But it is not the historical traditions which are 
connected with Falstaff that give him his perennial 
attraction. It is the personality that owes nothing 
to history with which Shakespeare's imaginative 

1 First adopted by Theobald in 1733; cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, 
ii. 257. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER \J\ 

power clothed him. The knight's unfettered indul- 
gence in sensual pleasures, his exuberant mendacity, 
and his love of his own ease are purged of offence by 
his colossal wit and jollity, while the contrast between 
his old age and his unreverend way of life supplies 
that tinge of melancholy which is inseparable from 
the highest manifestations of humour. The Eliza- 
bethan public recognised the triumphant success of 
the effort, and many of Falstaff's telling phrases, with 
the names of his foils, Justices Shallow and Silence, 
at once took root in popular speech. Shakespeare's 
purely comic power culminated in Falstaff ; he may 
be claimed as the most humorous figure in literature. 
In all probability 'The Merry Wives of Windsor,' 
a comedy inclining to farce, and unqualified by 
, Merr any pathetic interest, followed close upon 

wives of ' Henry IV.' In the epilogue to the ' Second 
Part of Henry IV ' Shakespeare had written : 
' If you be not too much cloyed with fat meat, our 
humble author will continue the story with Sir John 
in it . . . where for anything I know Falstaff shall 
die of a sweat, unless already a' be killed with your hard 
opinions.' Rowe asserts that 'Queen Elizabeth was 
so well pleased with that admirable character of Fal- 
staff in the two parts of " Henry IV " that she com- 
manded him to continue it for one play more, and to 
show him in love. Dennis, in the dedication of ' The 
Comical Gallant' (1702), noted that the 'Merry Wives' 
was written at the Queen's 'command and by her 
direction ; and she was so eager to see it acted that 
she commanded it to be finished in fourteen days, and 



172 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

was afterwards, as tradition tells us, very well pleased 
with the representation.' In his 'Letters' (1721, p. 
232) Dennis reduces the period of composition to ten 
days — 'a prodigious thing,' added Gildon, 1 'where all 
is so well contrived and carried on without the least 
confusion.' The localisation of the scene at Windsor, 
and the complimentary references to Windsor Castle, 
corroborate the tradition that the comedy was prepared 
to meet a royal command. An imperfect draft of 
the play was printed by Thomas Creede in 1602 ; 2 
the folio of 1623 first supplied a complete version. 
The plot was probably suggested by an Italian novel. 
A tale from Straparola's 'Notti' (ii. 2), of which an 
adaptation figured in the miscellany of novels called 
Tarleton's ' Newes out of Purgatorie ' (1590), another 
Italian tale from the ' Pecorone ' of Ser Giovanni 
Fiorentino (ii. 2), and a third romance, the Fishwife's 
tale of Brainford in the collection of stories called 
1 Westward for Smelts,' 3 supply incidents distantly 
resembling episodes in the play. Nowhere has Shake- 
speare so vividly reflected the bluff temper of contem- 
porary middle-class society. The presentment of the 
buoyant domestic life of an Elizabethan country town 
bears distinct impress of Shakespeare's own experi- 
ence. Again, there are literal references to the neigh- 

1 Remarks, p. 291. 

2 Cf. Shakespeare Society's reprint, 1842, ed. H alii well. 

3 This collection of stories is said by both Malone and Steevens 
to have been published in 1603, although no edition earlier than 1620 
is now known. The 1620 edition of Westward for Smelts, written by 
Kinde Kit of Kingston, was reprinted by the Percy Society in 1848. 
Cf. Shakespeare 's Library, ed. Hazlitt, I. ii. 1-80. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 1 73 

bourhood of Stratford. Justice Shallow, whose coat- 
of-arms is described as consisting of ' luces,' is thereby 
openly identified with Shakespeare's early foe, Sir 
Thomas Lucy of Charlecote. When Shakespeare 
makes Master Slender repeat the report that Master 
Page's fallow, greyhound was ' outrun on Cotsall ' 
(1. i. 93), he testifies to his interest in the coursing 
matches for which the Cotswold district was famed. 

The spirited character of Prince Hal was pecu- 
liarly congenial to its creator, and in ' Henry V ' 
Shakespeare, during 1598, brought his 
career to its close. The play was performed 
early in 1599, probably in the newly built Globe 
Theatre. Again Thomas Creede printed, in 1600, 
an imperfect draft, which was thrice reissued before 
a complete version was supplied in the First Folio 
of 1623. The dramatic interest of 'Henry V is 
slender. There is abundance of comic element, but 
death has removed Falstaff, whose last moments are 
described with the simple pathos that comes of a 
matchless art, and, though Falstaff' s companions sur- 
vive, they are thin shadows of his substantial figure. 
New comic characters are introduced in the person of 
three soldiers respectively of Welsh, Scottish, and Irish 
nationality, whose racial traits are contrasted with 
telling effect. The irascible Irishman, Captain Mac- 
Morris, is the only representative of his nation who 
figures in the long list of Shakespeare's dramatis 
persona. The scene in which the pedantic but 
patriotic Welshman, Fluellen, avenges the sneers of 
the braggart Pistol at his nation's emblem, by 



174 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

forcing him to eat the leek, overflows in vivacious 
humour. The piece in its main current presents a 
series of loosely connected episodes in which the hero's 
manliness is displayed as soldier, ruler, and lover. The 
topic reached its climax in the victory of the English 
at Agincourt, which powerfully appealed to patriotic 
sentiment. Besides the ' Famous Victories,' 1 there 
was another lost piece on the subject, which Henslowe 
produced for the first time on November 28, 1595. 
' Henry V ' may be regarded as Shakespeare's final 
experiment in the dramatisation of English history, 
and it artistically rounds off the series of his 'histories' 
which form collectively a kind of national epic. For 
'Henry VIII,' which was produced very late in his 
career, he was only in part responsible, and that 
'history' consequently belongs to a different category. 
A glimpse of autobiography may be discerned in 
the direct mention by Shakespeare in ' Henry V ' of an 
exciting episode in current history. In the prologue 
to act v. Shakespeare foretold for Robert Devereux, 
Essex and second Earl of Essex, the close friend of his 
lionof 61 " P a tron Southampton, an enthusiastic re- 
1601. ception by the people of London when he 

should come home after ' broaching ' rebellion in 
Ireland. 

Were now the general of our gracious empress, 
As in good time he may, from Ireland coming, 
Bringing rebellion broached on his sword, 
How many would the peaceful city quit 
To welcome him ! — (Act v. Chorus, 11. 30-4.) 

Essex had set out on his disastrous mission as 

1 Diary, p. 61 ; see p. 167. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 1 75 

the would-be pacificator of Ireland on March 27, 1599. 
The fact that Southampton went with him probably 
accounts for Shakespeare's avowal of sympathy. 
But Essex's effort failed. He was charged, soon 
after ' Henry V ' was produced, with treasonable 
neglect of duty, and he sought in 1601, again with the 
support of Southampton, to recover his position by 
stirring up rebellion in London. Then Shakespeare's 
reference to Essex's popularity with Londoners bore 
perilous fruit. The friends of the rebel leaders sought 
the dramatist's - countenance. They paid 40s. to 
Augustine Phillips, a leading member of Shake- 
speare's company, to induce him to revive at the 
Globe Theatre 'Richard II' (beyond doubt Shake- 
speare's play), in the hope that its scene of the kill- 
ing of a king might encourage a popular outbreak. 
Phillips subsequently deposed that he prudently told 
the conspirators who bespoke the piece that 'that 
play of Kyng Richard ' was ' so old and so long out 
of use as that they should have small or no company 
at it.' None the less the performance took place on 
-Saturday (February 7, 1601), the day preceding that 
fixed by Essex for the rising. The Queen, in a later 
conversation with William Lambarde (on August 4, 
1 601), complained that ' this tragedie' of 'Richard II,' 
which she had always viewed with suspicion, was 
played at the period with seditious intent ' forty times 
in open streets and houses.' 1 At the trial of Essex 
and his friends, Phillips gave evidence of the circum- 
stances under which the tragedy was revived at the 

1 Nichols, Progresses of Elizabeth, iii. 552. 



176 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Globe Theatre. E^sex was executed and South- 
ampton was imprisoned until the Queen's death. 
No proceedings were taken against the players, 1 but 
Shakespeare wisely abstained, for the time, from any 
public reference to the fate either of Essex or of his 
patron Southampton. 

Such incidents served to accentuate Shakespeare's 
growing reputation. For several years his genius as 
dramatist and poet had been acknowledged by critics 
shake- an d playgoers alike, and his social and pro- 
speare's fessional position had become considerable. 

popularity . . 

and inriu- Inside the theatre his influence was supreme, 
ence. When, in 1598, the manager of the company 

rejected Ben Jonson's first comedy — his ' Every Man 
in his Humour' — Shakespeare intervened, accor ] - 
ing to a credible tradition (reported by Rowe but 
denounced by GifTord), and procured a reversal of the 
decision in the interest of the unknown dramatist, 
who was his junior by nine years. He took a part 
when the piece was performed. Jonson was of a 
difficult and jealous temper, and subsequently he gave 
vent to an occasional expression of scorn at Shake- 
speare's expense ; but, despite passing manifestations 
of his unconquerable surliness, there can be no doubt 
that Jonson cherished genuine esteem and affection 
for Shakespeare till death. 2 Within a very few years 
of Shakespeare's death Sir Nicholas L' Estrange, an 

1 Cf. Domestic MSS. (Elizabeth) in the Public Record Office, vol. 
cclxxviii. Nos. 78 and 85; and Calendar of Domestic State Papers, 
1598-1601, pp. 575-8. 

2 Cf. Gilchrist, Examination of the charges . . . of ' Jonson? s Enmity 
towards Shakespeare, 1808. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 1 77 

industrious collector of anecdotes, put into writing an 
anecdote for which he made Dr. Donne responsible, 
attesting the amicable relations that habitually sub- 
sisted between Shakespeare and Jonson. ' Shake- 
speare,' ran the story, 'was godfather to one of Ben 
Jonson's children, and after the christening, being in 
a deep study, Jonson came to cheer him up and 
asked him why he was so melancholy. " No, faith, 
Ben," says he, "not I, but I have been considering 
a great while what should be the fittest gift for me to 
bestow upon my godchild, and I have resolv'd at 
last." "I prythee, what?" says he. "T faith, Ben, 
I'll e'en give him a dozen good Lattin spoons, and 
thou shalt translate them." ' 1 

The creator of Falstaff could have been no 
stranger to tavern life, and he doubtless took part with 
zest in the convivialities of men of letters. Tradition 
The Mer- re P orts that Shakespeare joined, at the 
maid meet- Mermaid Tavern in Bread Street, those 
meetings of Jonson and his associates which 
Beaumont described in his poetical ' Letter ' to Jonson : 

What things have we seen 
Done at the Mermaid ? heard words that have been 
So nimble and so full of subtle flame, 
As if that ever} 7 one from whence they came 
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest, 
And had resolved to live a fool the rest 
Of his dull life. 

1 Latten is a mixed metal resembling brass. Pistol in Merry 
Wives of Windsor (act i. scene i. 1. 165) likens Slender to a 'Latten 
Bilbo,' that is, a sword made of the mixed metal. Cf. Anecdotes and 
Traditions, edited from L'Estrange's MSS. by W. J. Thorns for the 
Camden Society, p. 2. 

N 



178 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

' Many were the wit-combats,' wrote Fuller of 
Shakespeare in his 'Worthies' (1662), 'betwixt him 
and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish 
great galleon and an English man of war; Master 
Jonson (like the former) was built far higher 
in learning, solid but slow in his performances. 
Shakespear, with the Englishman of war, lesser in 
bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, 
tack about, and take advantage of all winds by the 
quickness of his wit and invention.' 

Of the many testimonies paid to Shakespeare's 
literary reputation at this period of his career, the 
Meres'seu- most striking was that of Francis Meres. 
logy, 1598. Meres was a learned graduate of Cambridge 
University, a divine and schoolmaster, who brought out 
in 1 598 a collection of apophthegms on morals, religion, 
and literature which he entitled ' Palladis Tamia.' In 
the book he interpolated 'A comparative discourse of 
our English poets with the Greek, Latin, and Italian 
poets,' and there exhaustively surveyed contemporary 
literary effort in England. Shakespeare figured in 
Meres's pages as the greatest man of letters of the day. 
'The Muses would speak Shakespeare's fine filed 
phrase,' Meres asserted, 'if they could speak English.' 
'Among the English,' he declared, 'he was the most 
excellent in both kinds for the stage' {i.e. tragedy and 
comedy). The titles of six comedies (' Two Gentle- 
men of Verona,' 'Errors,' 'Love's Labour's Lost,' 
' Love's Labour's Won,' ' Midsummer Night's Dream,' 
and 'Merchant of Venice') and of six tragedies 
('Richard II,' 'Richard III,' 'Henry IV,' 'King 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 1 79 

John,' ' Titus,' and ' Romeo and Juliet ') were enumer- 
ated, and mention followed of his 'Venus and Adonis,' 
his ' Lucrece,' and his 'sugred 1 sonnets among his 
private friends.' These were cited as proof ' that the 
sweet witty soul of Ovid lives in mellifluous and 
honey-tongued Shakespeare.' In the same year a 
rival poet, Richard Barnfield, in ' Poems in Divers 
Humours,' predicted immortality for Shakespeare 
with no less confidence. 

And Shakespeare, thou whose honey-flowing vein 
(Pleasing the" world) thy Praises doth obtain, 
Whose Venus and whose Lucrece (sweet and chaste) 
Thy name in Fame's immortal Book have placed. 
Live ever you, at least in fame live ever : 
Well may the Body die, but Fame dies never. 

Shakespeare's name was thenceforth of value to 
unprincipled publishers, and they sought to palm off 
on their customers as his work the productions of 
inferior pens. Already, in 1595, Thomas Creede, 
Value of ^ e surre ptitious printer of 'Henry V and 
his name to the 'Merry Wives,' had issued the crude 
pu is 1 , <y/ragedie of Locrine,' as 'newly set foorth 
overseene and corrected by W. S.' It appropriated 
many passages from an older piece called ' Selimus,' 
which was possibly by Greene and certainly came 

1 This, or some synonym, is the conventional epithet applied at the 
date to Shakespeare and his work. Weever credited such characters 
of Shakespeare as Tarquin, Romeo, and Richard III with ' sugred 
tongues' in his Epigrams of 1595. In the Return from Parnassus 
(1601?) Shakespeare is apostrophised as 'sweet Master Shakespeare.' 
Milton did homage to the tradition by writing of ' sweetest Shakespeare ' 
in U Allegro. 



l8o WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

into being long before Shakespeare had written a line 
of blank verse. The same initials — ' W. S.' 1 — figured 
on the title-pages of ' The Puritaine, or the Widdow of 
Watling-streete ' (printed by G. Eld in 1607), and of 
'The True Chronicle Historie of Thomas, Lord 
Cromwell' (licensed August 11, 1602, and printed by 
Thomas Snodham in 1613). Shakespeare's full name 
appeared on the title-pages of ' The Life of Oldcastle ' 
in 1600 (printed by T[homas] P[avier]), of 'The 
London Prodigall ' in 1605 (printed by T. C. for 
Nathaniel Butter), and of ' The Yorkshire Tragedy ' 
in 1608 (by R. B. for Thomas Pavier). None of these 
six plays have any internal claim to Shakespeare's 
authorship ; nevertheless all were uncritically included 
in the third folio of his collected works(i66zi). Schlegel 
and a few other critics of repute have, on no grounds 
that merit acceptance, detected signs of Shakespeare's 
genuine work in one of the six, 'The Yorkshire 
Tragedy ' ; it is 'a coarse, crude, and vigorous im- 
promptu,' which is clearly by a far less experienced 
hand. 

1 A hack-writer, Wentworth Smith, took a hand in producing 
thirteen plays, none of which are extant, for the theatrical manager, 
Philip Henslowe, between 1601 and 1603. The Hector of Germanie, 
an extant play ' made by W. Smith ' and published ' with new additions ' 
in 1615, was doubtless by Wentworth Smith, and is the only dramatic 
work by him that has survived. Neither internal nor external evidence 
confirms the theory that the six above-mentioned plays, which have 
been wrongly claimed for Shakespeare, were really by Wentworth 
Smith. The use of the initials ' W. S.' was not due to the pub- 
lishers' belief that Wentworth Smith was the author, but to their 
endeavour to hoodwink their customers into a belief that the plays 
were by Shakespeare. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OE DRAMATIC POWER l8l 

The fraudulent practice of crediting Shakespeare 
with valueless plays from the pens of comparatively 
dull-witted contemporaries was in vogue among enter- 
prising traders in literature both early and late in the 
seventeenth century. The worthless old play on the 
subject of King John was attributed to Shakespeare 
in the reissues of 161 1 and 1622. Humphrey Moseley, 
a reckless publisher of a later period, fraudulently 
entered on the ' Stationers' Register ' on September 9, 
1653, two pieces which he represented to be in whole 
or in part by Shakespeare, viz. ' The Merry Devill of 
Edmonton ' and the ' History of Cardenio,' a share in 
which was assigned to Fletcher. ' The Merry Devill 
of Edmonton,' which was produced on the stage be- 
fore the close of the sixteenth century, was entered on 
the 'Stationers' Register,' October 22, 1607, and was 
first published anonymously in 1608; it is a delight- 
ful comedy, abounding in both humour and romantic 
sentiment ; at times it recalls scenes of the ' Merry 
Wives of Windsor,' but no sign of Shakespeare's 
workmanship is apparent. The ' History of Cardenio' 
is not extant. 1 Francis Kirkman, another active 
London publisher, who first printed William Rowley's 
'Birth of Merlin' in 1662, described it on the title- 
page as ' written by William Shakespeare and William 
Rowley ; ' it was unwisely reprinted at Halle in a so- 
called ' Collection of pseudo-Shakespearean plays ' in 
1887. 

But poems no less than plays, in which Shake- 
speare had no hand, were deceptively placed to his 

1 Cf. p. 258, infra. 



1 82 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

credit as soon as his fame was established. In 1599 
William Jaggard, a well-known pirate publisher, 
issued a poetic anthology which he entitled 'The 
'The Pis- Passionate Pilgrim, by W. Shakespeare.' 
sionate The volume opened with two sonnets by 
ignm. Shakespeare which were not previously in 
print, and there followed three poems drawn from 
the already published 'Love's Labour's Lost'; but 
the bulk of the volume was by Richard Barnfield 
and others. 1 A third edition of the ' Passionate Pil- 
grim ' was printed in 16 12 with unaltered title-page, 
although the incorrigible Jaggard had added two new 
poems which he silently filched from Thomas Hey- 
wood's ' Troia Britannica.' Heywood called attention 
to his own grievance in the dedicatory epistle before 
his 'Apology for Actors' (1612), and he added that 
Shakespeare resented the more substantial injury 
which the publisher had done him. ' I know,' wrote 
Heywood of Shakespeare, ' [he was] much offended 
with M. Jaggard that (altogether unknown to him) pre- 
sumed to make so bold with his name.' In the result 

1 There were twenty pieces in. all. The five by Shakespeare are 
placed in the order i. ii. iii. v. xvi. Of the remainder, two — ' If music 
and sweet poetry agree ' (Xo. viii.) and ' As it fell upon a day ' (Xo. xx.) 
— were borrowed from Barnheld's Poems in Divers Humours (1598). 
'Venus with Adonis sitting by her' (Xo. xi.) is from Bartholomew 
Griffin's Fidessa (1596); 'My flocks feed not' (Xo. xvii.) is adapted 
from Thomas Weelkes's Madrigals (1597); ' Live with me and be my 
love ' is by Marlowe: and the appended stanza, entitled * Love's Answer,' 
by Sir Walter Ralegh (Xo. xix.) ; ' Crabbed age and youth cannot live 
together' (Xo. xii.), is a popular song often quoted by the Elizabethan 
dramatists. Xothing has been ascertained of the origin and history of 
the remaining nine poems (iv. vi. vii. ix. x. xiii. xiv. xviii.). 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF DRAMATIC POWER 1 83 

the publisher seems to have removed Shakespeare's 
name from the title-page of a few copies. This is 
the only instance on record of a protest on Shake- 
speare's part against the many injuries which he 
suffered at the hands of contemporary publishers. 

In 1601 Shakespeare's full name was appended to 
'a poetical essaie on the Phoenix and the Turtle,' 
' The which was published by Edward Blount in an 

anxTihe appendix to Robert Chester's 'Love's Martyr, 
Turtle. 1 or Rosalins complaint, allegorically shadow- 
ing the Truth of Love in the Constant Fate of the 
Phoenix and Turtle.' The drift of Chester's crabbed 
verse is not clear, nor can the praise of perspicuity be 
allowed to the appendix to which Shakespeare contrib- 
uted, together with Marston, Chapman, Ben Jonson, 
and ' Ignoto.' The appendix is introduced by a new 
title-page running thus : ' Hereafter follow diverse 
poeticall Essaies on the former subject, viz : the 
Turtle and Phoenix. Done by the best and chiefest 
of our modern writers, with their names subscribed 
to their particular workes : never before extant.' 
Shakespeare's alleged contribution consists of thir- 
teen four-lined stanzas in trochaics, each line being of 
seven syllables, with the rhymes disposed as in Ten- 
nyson's ' In Memoriam.' The concluding ' threnos ' is 
in five three-lined stanzas, also in trochaics, each 
stanza having a single rhyme. The poet describes in 
enigmatic language the obsequies of the Phoenix 
and the Turtle-dove, who had been united in life by 
the ties of a purely spiritual love. The poem may be 
a mere play of fancy without recondite intention, or it 



1 84 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

may be of allegorical import ; but whether it bear 
relation to pending ecclesiastical, political, or meta- 
physical controversy, or whether it interpret popular 
grief for the death of some leaders of contemporary 
society, is not easily determined. 1 Happily Shake- 
speare wrote nothing else of like character. 

1 A unique copy of Chester's Love's Martyr is in Mr. Christie- 
Miller's library at Britwell. Of a reissue of the original edition in 1611 
with a new title, The Annals of Great Brittaine, a copy (also unique) is 
in the British Museum. A reprint of the original edition was prepared 
for private circulation by Dr. Grosart in 1878, in his series of 'Occa- 
sional Issues.' It was also printed in the same year as one of the pub- 
lications of the New Shakspere Society. Matthew Roydon in his elegy 
on Sir Philip Sidney, appended to Spenser's Colin Clouts Come Home 
Again, 1595, describes the part figuratively played in Sidney's obsequies 
by the turtle-dove, swan, phoenix, and eagle, in verses that very closely 
resemble Shakespeare's account of the funereal functions fulfilled by the 
same four birds in his contribution to Chester's volume. This resemblance 
suggests that Shakespeare's poem may be a fanciful adaptation of Roy- 
don's elegiac conceits without ulterior significance. Shakespeare's con- 
cluding ' Threnos ' is imitated in metre and phraseology by Fletcher in 
his Mad Lover in the song ' The Lover's Legacy to his Cruel Mistress.' 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 1 85 



XII 

THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 

Shakespeare, in middle life, brought to practical 
affairs a singularly sane and sober temperament. 
Shake- I n ' Ratseis Ghost' (1605), an anecdotal 
speare's biography of Gamaliel Ratsey, a notorious 

practical . . ° ^ J 1 . J * _ _ 

tempera- highwayman, who was hanged at Bed- 
mem, iord on March 26, 1605, the highwayman is 
represented as compelling a troop of actors whom he 
met by chance on the road to perform in his presence. 
At the close of the performance Ratsey, according 
to the memoir, addressed himself to a leader of the 
company, and cynically urged him to practise the 
utmost frugality in London. ' When thou feelest thy 
purse well lined (the counsellor proceeded), buy thee 
some place or lordship in the country that, growing 
weary of playing, thy money may there bring thee to 
dignity and reputation.' Whether or no Ratsey's 
biographer consciously identified the highwayman's 
auditor with Shakespeare, it was the prosaic course 
of conduct marked out by Ratsey that Shakespeare 
literally followed. As soon as his position in his pro- 
fession was assured, he devoted his energies to re-es- 
tablishing the fallen fortunes of his family in his native 



1 86 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

place, and to acquiring for himself and his successors 
the status of gentlefolk. 

His father's pecuniary embarrassments had steadily 
increased since his son's departure. Creditors harassed 
His him unceasingly. In 1587 one Nicholas Lane 

fathers pursued him for a debt for which he had be- 
cu ties. come ii a ^le as surety for his brother Henry, 
who was still farming their father's lands at Snitterfield. 
Through 1588 and 1589 John Shakespeare retaliated 
with pertinacity on a debtor named John Tompson. But 
in 1 59 1 a creditor, Adrian Quiney, obtained a writ of 
distraint against him, and although in 1592 he attested 
inventories taken on the death of two neighbours, Ralph 
Shaw and Henry Field, father of the London printer, 
he was on December 25 of the sarnie year ' presented ' 
as a recusant for absenting himself from Church. 
The commissioners reported that his absence was 
probably due to ' fear of process for debt.' He figures 
for the last time in the proceedings of the local court, 
in his customary role of defendant, on March 9, 1595. 
He was then joined with two fellow-traders — Philip 
Green, a chandler, and Henry Rogers, a butcher — as 
defendant in a suit brought by Adrian Quiney and 
Thomas Barker for the recovery of the sum of five 
pounds. Unlike his partners in the litigation, his name 
is not followed in the record by a mention of his 
calling, and when the suit reached a later stage his 
name was omitted altogether. These may be viewed 
as indications that in the course of the proceedings 
he finally retired from trade, which had been of late 
prolific in disasters for him. In January 1 596-7 he 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 1 87 

conveyed a slip of land attached to his dwelling in 
Henley Street to one George Badger. 

There is a likelihood that the poet's wife fared, 
in the poet's absence, no better than his father. The 
only contemporary mention made of her between her 
His wife's marriage in 1582 and her husband's death in 
debt. 1616 j s as th e borrower at an unascertained 

date (evidently before 1595) of forty shillings from 
Thomas Whittington, who had formerly been her 
father's shepherd. The money was unpaid when Whit- 
tington died in 1601, and he directed his executor to 
recover the sum from the poet and distribute it among 
the poor of Stratford. 1 

It was probably in 1596 that Shakespeare re- 
turned, after nearly eleven years' absence, to his 
native town, and worked a revolution in the affairs of 
his family. The prosecutions of his father in the 
local court ceased. Thenceforth the poet's rela- 
tions with Stratford were uninterrupted. He still 
resided in London for most of the year ; but until the 
close of his professional career he paid the town at 
least one annual visit, and he was always formally 
described as 'of Stratford-on-Avon, gentleman.' He 
was no doubt there on August 11, 1596, when his 
only son, Hamnet, was buried in the parish church ; 
the boy was eleven and a half years old. 

At the same date the poet's father, despite his 
pecuniary embarrassments, took a step, by way of 
regaining his prestige, which must be assigned to the 

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 186. 



1 88 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

poet's intervention. 1 He made application to the 
College of Heralds for a coat-of-arms. 2 Then, as 
now, the heralds when bestowing new coats-of-arms 
commonly credited the applicant's family with an 
imaginary antiquity, and little reliance need be placed 
on the biographical or genealogical statements alleged 
in grants of arms. The poet's father or the poet 
himself when first applying to the College stated that 
The coat- John Shakespeare, in 1 568, while he was bailiff 
of-arms. f Stratford, and while he was by virtue of 
that office a justice of the peace, had obtained from 
Robert Cook, then Clarenceux herald, a ' pattern ' or 
sketch of an armorial coat. This allegation is not 
noticed in the records of the College, and may be a 
formal fiction designed by John Shakespeare and his 
son to recommend their claim to the notice of the 
heralds. The negotiations of 1568, if they were not 
apocryphal, were certainly abortive ; otherwise there 
would have been no necessity for the further action 
of 1596. In any case, on October 20, 1596, a draft, 
which remains in the College of Arms, was pre- 

1 There is an admirable discussion of the question involved in the 
poet's heraldry in Herald and Genealogist, i. 510. Facsimiles of all 
the documents preserved in the College of Arms are given in Miscellanea 
Genealogica et Heraldica, 2nd ser. 1886, i. 109. Halliwell-Phillipps 
prints imperfectly one of the 1596 draft-grants, and that of 1599 {Out- 
lines, ii. 56, 60), but does not distinguish between the character of the 
negotiations of the two years. 

2 It is still customary at the College of Arms to inform an applicant 
for a coat-of-arms who has a father alive that the application should be 
made in the father's name, and the transaction conducted as if the 
father were the principal. It was doubtless on advice of this kind that 
Shakespeare was acting in the negotiations that are described below. 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 189 

pared under the direction of William Dethick, 
Garter King-of-Arms, granting John's request for 
a coat-of-arms. Garter stated, with characteristic 
vagueness, that he had been ' by credible report ' 
informed that the applicant's ' parentes and late an- 
tecessors were for theire valeant and f aithf ull service 
advanced and rewarded by the most prudent prince 
King Henry the Seventh of famous memorie, sythence 
whiche tyme they have continewed at those partes [i.e. 
Warwickshire] in goodreputacion and credit ; ' and that 
' the said John [had] maryed Mary, daughter and heiress 
of Robert Arden, of Wilmcote, gent.' In considera- 
tion of these titles to honour, Garter declared that he 
assigned to Shakespeare this shield, viz. : ' Gold, on a 
bend sable, a spear of the first, and for his crest or cog- 
nizance a falcon, his wings displayed argent, standing on 
a wreath of his colours, supporting a spear gold steeled 
as aforesaid.' In the margin of this draft-grant there 
is a pen sketch of the arms and crest, and above them 
is written the motto, ' Non Sans Droict.' 1 A second 
copy of the draft, also dated in 1596, is extant at the 
•College. The only alterations are the substitution of 
the word 'grandfather' for 'antecessors' in the account 
of John Shakespeare's ancestry, and the substitution 
of the word ' esquire ' for ' gent ' in the description of 
his wife's father, Robert Arden. At the foot of this 
draft, however, appeared some disconnected and 
unverifiable memoranda which John Shakespeare or 

1 In a manuscript in the British Museum (Harl. MS. 6140, f. 45) 
is a copy of the tricking of the arms of William ' Shakspere,' which is 
described ' as a pattent per Will'm Dethike Garter, principale King of 
Armes'; this is figured in French's Shakespeareana Genealogica, p. 524. 



190 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

his son had supplied to the heralds, to the effect that 
John had been bailiff of Stratford, had received a 
' pattern ' of a shield from Clarenceux Cook, was a 
man of substance, and had married into a worshipful 
family. 1 

Neither of these drafts was fully executed. It 
may have been that the unduly favourable representa- 
tions made to the College respecting John Shake- 
speare's social and pecuniary position excited sus- 
picion even in the habitually credulous minds of the 
heralds, or those officers may have deemed the 
profession of the son, who was conducting the nego- 
tiation, a bar to completing the transaction. At any 
rate, Shakespeare and his father allowed three years 
to elapse before (as far as extant documents show) 
they made a further endeavour to secure the coveted 
distinction. In 1599 their efforts were crowned 
with success. Changes in the interval among the 
officials at the College may have facilitated the 
proceedings. In 1597 the Earl of Essex had become 
Earl Marshal and chief of the Heralds' College (the 
office had been in commission in 1596); while the 

1 These memoranda, which were as follows, were first written with- 
out the words here enclosed in brackets; those words were afterwards 
interlineated in the manuscript in a hand similar to that of the original 
sentences: 

' [This John shoeth] A patierne therof under Clarent Cookes hand 
in paper, xx. years past. [The Q. officer and cheffe of the towne] 

[A Justice of peace] And was a Baylife of Stratford uppo Avon 
xv. or xvj. years past. 

That he hathe lands and tenements of good wealth and substance 
[500 li.] 

That he mar[ried a daughter and heyre of Arden, a gent, of 
worship.] ' 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 191 

great scholar and antiquary, William Camden, had 
joined the College, also in 1597, as Clarenceux King- 
of-Arms. The poet was favourably known to both 
Camden and the Earl of Essex, the close friend of 
the Earl of Southampton. His father's application 
now took a new form. No grant of arms was asked 
for. It was asserted without qualification that the 
coat, as set out in the draft-grants of 1596 had been 
assigned to John Shakespeare while he was bailiff, and 
the heralds were merely invited to give him a ' recogni- 
tion ' or ' exemplification ' of it. 1 At the same time he 
asked permission for himself to impale, and his eldest 
son and other children to quarter, on ' his ancient coat- 
of-arms' that of the Ardens of Wilmcote, his wife's 
family. The College officers were characteristically 
complacent. A draft was prepared under the hands of 
Dethick, the Garter king, and of Camden, the Claren- 
ceux King, granting the required 'exemplification ' and 
authorising the required impalement and quartering. 
On one point only did Dethick and Camden betray con- 
scientious scruples. Shakespeare and his father ob- 
viously desired the heralds to recognise the title of Mary 
Shakespeare (the poet's mother) to bear the arms 
of the great Warwickshire family of Arden, then 
seated at Park Hall. But the relationship, if it existed, 
was undetermined ; the Warwickshire Ardens were 
gentry of influence in the county, and were certain to 

1 An ' exemplification ' was invariably secured more easily than a 
new grant of arms. The heralds might, if they chose, tacitly accept, 
without examination, the applicant's statement that his family had borne 
arms long ago, and they thereby regarded themselves as relieved of the 
obligation of close inquiry into his present status. 



I Q2 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

protest against any hasty assumption of identity be- 
tween their line and that of the humble farmer of Wilm- 
cote. After tricking the Warwickshire Arden coat in 
the margin of the draft-grant for the purpose of indicat- 
ing the manner of its impalement, the heralds on second 
thoughts erased it. They substituted in their sketch 
the arms of an Arden family living at Alvanley in 
the distant county of Cheshire. With that stock there 
was no pretence that Robert Arden of Wilmcote was 
lineally connected; but the bearers of the Alvanley coat 
were unlikely to learn of its suggested impalement 
with the Shakespeare shield, and the heralds were less 
liable to the risk of litigation. But the Shakespeares 
wisely relieved the College of all anxiety by omitting 
to assume the Arden coat. The Shakespeare arms 
alone are displayed with full heraldic elaboration on the 
monument above the poet's grave in Stratford Church ; 
they alone appear on the seal and on the tombstone of 
his elder daughter, Mrs. Susanna Hall, impaled with the 
arms of her husband ; 1 and they alone were quartered 
by Thomas Nash, the first husband of the poet's 
granddaughter, Elizabeth Hall. 2 

Some objection was taken a few years later to the 
grant even of the Shakespeare shield, but it was based 
on vexatious grounds that could not be upheld. 
Early in the seventeenth century Ralph Brooke, who 
was York herald from 1593 till his death in 1625, and 
was long engaged in a bitter quarrel with his fellow- 

1 On the gravestone of John Hall, Shakespeare's elder son-in-law, 
the Shakespeare arms are similarly impaled with those of Hall. 

2 French Shakespeareana Cenealogica, p. 413. 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 1 93 

officers ai the College, complained that the arms 
'exemplified' to Shakespeare usurped the coat of Lord 
Mauley, on whose shield ' a bend sable ' also figured. 
Dethick and Camden, who were responsible for any 
breach of heraldic etiquette in the matter, answered 
that the Shakespeare shield bore as much resemblance 
to the Mauley coat as to that of the Harley and the 
Ferrers families, which also bore ' a bend sable,' but 
that in point of fact it differed conspicuously from all 
three by the presence of a spear on the ' bend.' Dethick 
and Camden added, with customary want of precision, 
that the person to whom the grant was made had 
'borne magistracy and was justice of peace at Strat- 
ford-on-Avon ; he maried the daughter and heire of 
Arderne, and was able to maintain that Estate.' 1 

Meanwhile, in 1597, the poet had taken openly 
in his own person a more effective step in the way of 
rehabilitating himself and his family in the eyes of 
Purchaseof his fellow-townsmen. On May 4 he pur- 
New Place. cnasec [ the largest house in the town, 
known as New Place. It had been built by Sir 
Hugh Clopton more than a century before, and 
seems to have fallen into a ruinous condition. But 
Shakespeare paid for it, with two barns and two 
gardens, the then substantial sum of 60/. Owing 
to the sudden death of the vendor, William Under- 

1 The details of Brooke's accusation are not extant, and are only 
to be deduced from the answer of Garter and Clarenceux to Brooke's 
complaint, two copies of which are accessible : one is in the vol. W-Z 
at the Heralds' College, f. 276; and the other, slightly differing, is in 
Ashmole MS. 846, ix. f. 50. Both are printed in the Herald and 
Cenealogist, i. 514. 



194 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

hill, on July 7, 1597, the original transfer of the prop- 
erty was left at the time incomplete. Underhill's 
son Fulk died a felon, and he was succeeded in the 
family estates by his brother Hercules, who on 
coming of age, May 1602, completed in a new deed 
the transfer of New Place to Shakespeare. 1 On 
February 4, 1 597-8, Shakespeare was described as a 
householder in Chapel Street ward, in which New 
Place was situated, and as the owner of ten quarters 
of corn. The inventory was made owing to the 
presence of famine in the town, and only two inhab- 
itants were credited with a larger holding. In the 
same year (1598) he procured stone for the repair of 
the house, and before 1602 had planted a fruit 
orchard. He is traditionally said to have interested 
himself in the garden, and to have planted with 
his own hands a mulberry tree, which was long a 
prominent feature of it. When this was cut down, 
in 1758, numerous relics were made from it, and 
were treated with an almost superstitious venera- 
tion. 2 Shakespeare does not appear to have per- 
manently settled at New Place till 161 1. In 1609 

1 Notes and Queries, 8th ser. v. 478. 

2 The tradition that Shakespeare planted the mulberry tree was not 
put on record till it was cut down in 1758. In 1760 mention is made of 
it in a letter of thanks in the corporation's archives from the Steward of 
the Court of Record to the corporation of Stratford for presenting him 
with a standish made from the wood. But, according to the testimony 
of old inhabitants confided to Malone (cf. his Life of Shakespeare, 1790, 
p. 118), the legend had been orally current in Stratford since Shake- 
speare's lifetime. The tree was perhaps planted in 1609, when a French- 
man named Veron distributed a number of young mulberry trees through 
the midland counties by order of James I, who desired to encourage 
the culture of silk-worms (cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 134, 411-16). 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 1 95 

the house, or part of it, was occupied by the town 
clerk, Thomas Greene, ' alias Shakespeare,' who 
claimed to be the poet's cousin. His grandmother 
seems to have been a Shakespeare. He often acted 
as the poet's legal adviser. 

It was doubtless under their son's guidance that 
Shakespeare's father and mother set on foot in 
November 1597 — six months after his acquisition of 
New Place — a lawsuit against John Lambert for the 
recovery of the mortgaged estate of Asbies in Wilm- 
cote. The litigation dragged on for some years 
without result. 

Three letters written during 1598 by leading men 
at Stratford are still extant among the Corporation's 
archives, and leave no doubt of the reputation for 
wealth and influence with which the purchase of New 
Place invested the poet in his fellow-townsmen's 
Appeals eyes. Abraham Sturley, who was once 
for aid bailiff, writing early in 1598, apparently 
fellow- to a brother in London, says : ' This is 
townsmen. one special remembrance from our father's 
motion. It seemeth by him that our countryman, Mr. 
Shakspere, is willing to disburse some money upon 
some odd yardland or other at Shottery, or near 
about us : he thinketh it a very fit pattern to move 
him to deal in the matter of our tithes. By the in- 
structions you can give him thereof, and by the 
friends he can make therefor, we think it a fair mark 
for him to shoot at, and would do us much good.' 
Richard Quiney, another townsman, father of Thomas 
(afterwards one of Shakespeare's two sons-in-law), 



I96 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

was, in the autumn of the same year, harassed by 
debt, and on October 25 appealed to Shakespeare for 
a loan of money. ' Loving countryman,' the applica- 
tion ran, ! I am bold of you as of a friend craving 
your help with xxx/z.' Quiney was staying at the 
Bell Inn in Carter Lane, London, and his main busi- 
ness in the metropolis was to procure exemption for 
the town of Stratford from the payment of a subsidy. 
Abraham Sturley, writing to Quiney from Stratford 
ten days later (on November 4, 1598), pointed out to 
him that since the town was wholly unable, in conse- 
quence of the dearth of corn, to pay the tax, he hoped 
' that our countryman, Mr. Wm. Shak., would procure 
us money, which I will like of, as I shall hear when, 
and where, and how.' 

The financial prosperity to which this corre- 
spondence and the transactions immediately pre- 
Financiai ceding it point has been treated as one of 
position the chief mysteries of Shakespeare's career, 
eotel599 " but the difficulties are gratuitous. There is 
practically nothing in Shakespeare's financial position 
that a study of the contemporary conditions of 
theatrical life does not fully explain. It was not 
until 1599, when the Globe Theatre was built, that 
he acquired any share in the profits of a playhouse. 
But his revenues as a successful dramatist and actor 
were by no means contemptible at an earlier date. 
His gains in the capacity of dramatist formed the 
smaller source of income. The highest price known 
to have been paid before 1599 to an author for a 
play by the manager of an acting company was 11/.; 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 1 97 

61. was the lowest rate. 1 A small additional gratuity — 
rarely apparently exceeding ten shillings — was be- 
stowed on a dramatist whose piece on its first produc- 
tion was especially well received ; and the author was 
by custom allotted, by way of ' benefit,' a certain pro- 
portion of the receipts of the theatre on the production 
of a play for the second time. 2 Other sums, amount- 
ing at times to as much as 4/., were bestowed on the 
author for revising and altering an old play for a revival. 
The nineteen plays which may be set to Shakespeare's 
credit between 1591 and 1599, combined with such 
revising work as fell to his lot during those eight 
years, cannot consequently have brought him less 
than 200/., or some 20/. a year. Eight or nine of 
these plays were published during the period, but the 

1 I do not think we shall over-estimate the present value of Shake- 
speare's income if we multiply each of its items by eight, but it is diffi- 
cult to state authoritatively the ratio between the value of money in 
Shakespeare's time and in our own. The money value of corn then 
and now is nearly identical; but other necessaries of life — meat, milk, 
eggs, wool, building materials, and the like — were by comparison ludi- 
crously cheap in Shakespeare's day. If we strike the average between 
the low price of these commodities and the comparatively high price of 
corn, the average price of necessaries will be found to be in Shakespeare's 
day about an eighth of what it is now. The cost of luxuries is also now 
about eight times the price that it was in the sixteenth or seventeenth 
century. Sixpence was the usual price of a new quarto or octavo book 
such as would now be sold at prices ranging between three shillings 
and sixpence and six shillings. Half a crown was charged for the best- 
placed seats in the best theatres. The purchasing power of one Eliza- 
bethan pound might be generally defined in regard to both necessaries and 
luxuries as equivalent to that of eight pounds of the present currency. 

2 Cf. Henslowe's Diary, ed. Collier, pp. xxviii. seq. After the 
Restoration the receipts at the third performance were given for the 
author's ' benefit.' 



I98 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

publishers operated independently of the author, 
taking all the risks and, at the same time, all the re- 
ceipts. The publication of Shakespeare's plays in 
no way affected his monetary resources, although his 
friendly relations with the printer Field doubtless 
secured him, despite the absence of any copyright 
law, some part of the profits in the large and con- 
tinuous sale of his poems. 

But it was as an actor that at an early date he 
acquired a genuinely substantial and secure income. 
There is abundance of contemporary evidence to show 
that the stage was for an efficient actor an assured 
avenue to comparative wealth. In 1 590 Robert Greene 
describes in his tract entitled ' Never too Late ' a meet- 
ing with a player whom he took by his ' outward habit ' 
to be ' a gentleman of great living ' and a ' substan- 
tial man.' The player informed Greene that he had 
at the beginning of his career travelled on foot, 
bearing his theatrical properties on his back, but he 
prospered so rapidly that at the time of speak- 
ing ' his very share in playing apparel would not be 
sold for 200/.' Among his neighbours 'where he 
dwelt' he was reputed able 'at his proper cost to build 
a windmill. ' In the university play, ' The Return from 
Parnassus' (1600?), a poor student enviously com- 
plains of the wealth and position which a successful 
actor derived from his calling : 

England affords those glorious vagabonds, 
That carried erst their fardles on their backs, 
Coursers to ride on through the gazing streets, 
Sweeping it in their glaring satin suits, 
And pages to attend their masterships; 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 1 99 

With mouthing words that better wits had framed, 
They purchase lands and now esquires are made. 1 

The travelling actors, from whom the highway- 
man Gamaliel Ratsey extorted a free performance in 
1604, were represented as men with the certainty 
of a rich competency in prospect. 2 An efficient 
actor received in 1635 as large a regular salary 
as 180/. The lowest known valuation set an actor's 
wages at $s. a day, or about 45/. a year. Shake- 
speare's emoluments as an actor before 1599 are 
not likely to have- fallen below 100/.; while the re- 
muneration due to performances at Court or in noble- 
men's houses, if the accounts of 1594 be accepted 
as the basis of reckoning, added some 15/. 

Thus over 130/. (equal to 1,040/. of to-day) would 
be Shakespeare's average annual revenue before 1599. 
Such a sum would be regarded as a very large income 
in a country town. According to the author of 
' Ratseis Ghost,' the actor, who may well have been 
meant for Shakespeare, practised in London a strict 
frugality, and there seems no reason why Shakespeare 
should not have been able in 1597 to draw from his 

1 Return from Parnassus, act v. scene i. 11. 10-16. 

2 Cf. H[enry] P[arrot]'s Laquei Ridiculosi or Springes for Wood- 
cocks, 1613. Epigram No. 131, headed 'Theatrum Licencia': 

Cotta's become a player most men know, 

And will no long take such toyling paines 
For here's the spring (saith he) whence pleasures flow 

And brings them damnable excessive gaines: 
That now are cedars growne from shrubs and sprigs, 

Since Greene's Tu Quoque and those Garlicke Jigs. 

Greene's Tu Quoque was a drolling piece very popular with the rougher 
London playgoers, and ' Garlicke Jigs ' alluded derisively to step-dances 
which won much esteem from patrons of the smaller playhouses. 



200 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

savings 60/. wherewith to buy New Place. His 
resources might well justify his fellow-townsmen's 
opinion of his wealth in 1598, and suffice be- 
tween 1597 and 1599 to meet his expenses, in re- 
building the house, stocking the barns with grain, and 
conducting various legal proceedings. But, according 
to tradition, he had in the Earl of Southampton a 
wealthy and generous friend who on one occasion 
gave him a large gift of money to enable ' him to go 
through with ' a purchase to which he had a mind. 
A munificent gift, added to professional gains, leaves 
nothing unaccounted for in Shakespeare's financial 
position before 1599. 

After 1599 his sources of income from the theatre 
greatly increased. In 1635 the heirs of the actor 
Financial Richard Burbage were engaged in litigation 
position respecting their proprietary rights in the two 

1599- playhouses, the Globe and the Blackfriars 
theatres. The documents relating to this litigation 
supply authentic, although not very detailed, informa- 
tion of Shakespeare's interest in theatrical property. 1 
Richard Burbage, with his brother Cuthbert, erected 
at their sole cost the Globe Theatre in the winter of 
1 598-9, and the Blackfriars Theatre, which their father 
was building at the time of his death in 1597, was also 
their property. After completing the Globe they 
leased out, for twenty-one years, shares in the receipts 
of the theatre to ' those deserving men Shakespeare, 

1 The documents which are now in the Public Record Office among 
the papers relating to the Lord Chamberlain's Office, were printed in 
full by Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 312-19. 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 201 

Hemings, Condell, Philips, and others.' All the share- 
holders named were, like Burbage, active members of 
Shakespeare's company of players. The shares, which 
numbered sixteen in all, carried with them the obli- 
gation of providing for the expenses of the playhouse, 
and were doubtless in the first instance freely bestowed. 
Hamlet claims, in the play scene (in. ii. 293), that 
the success of his improvised tragedy deserved to ' get 
him a fellowship in a cry of players ' — a proof that 
a successful dramatist might reasonably expect such 
a reward for a conspicuous effort. In ' Hamlet,' 
moreover, both a share and a half-share of ' a fellow- 
ship in a cry of players ' are described as assets of 
enviable value (in. ii, 294-6). How many shares 
originally fell to Shakespeare there is no means of 
determining. Records of later subdivisions suggest 
that they did not exceed two. The Globe was an 
exceptionally large and popular playhouse. It would 
accommodate some two thousand spectators, whose 
places cost them sums varying between twopence and 
half a crown. The receipts were therefore considera- 
ble, hardly less than 25/. daily, or some 8,000/. a year. 
According to the documents of 1635, an actor-sharer 
at the Globe received above 200/. a year on each share, 
besides his actor's salary of 180/. Thus Shakespeare 
drew from the Globe Theatre, at the lowest estimate, 
more than 500/. a year in all. 

His interest in the Blackfriars Theatre was com- 
paratively unimportant, and is less easy to estimate. 
The often quoted documents on which Collier de- 
pended to prove him a substantial shareholder in that 



202 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

playhouse have long been proved to be forgeries. The 
pleas in the lawsuit of 1635 show that the Burbages, 
the owners, leased the Blackfriars Theatre after its 
establishment in 1597 for a long term of years to the 
master of the Children of the Chapel, but bought out 
the lessee at the end of 1609, an d then 'placed' in 
it 'men-players which were Hemings, Condell, Shake- 
speare, &c.' To these and other actors they allotted 
shares in the receipts, the shares numbering eight in 
all. The profits were far smaller than at the Globe, 
and if Shakespeare held one share (certainty on the 
point is impossible), it added not more than 100/. a 
year to his income, and that not until 16 10. 

His remuneration as dramatist between 1599 and 
161 1 was also by no means contemptible. Prices 
paid to dramatists for plays rose rapidly in the early 
years of the seventeenth century, 1 while the value 
of the author's ' benefits ' grew with the growing 
Later vogue of the theatre. The exceptional 

income. popularity of Shakespeare's plays after 1599 
gave him the full advantage of higher rates of pecu- 
niary reward in all directions, and the seventeen plays 
which were produced by him between that year and 
the close of his professional career in 161 1 probably 
brought him an average return of 20/. each or 340/. in 
all — nearly 30/. a year. At the same time the increase 
in the number of Court performances under James I, 
and the additional favour bestowed on Shakespeare's 

1 In 1 61 3 Robert Daborne, a playwright of insignificant reputation, 
charged for a drama as much as 25/. Alleyn Papers, ed. Collier, 
p. 65. 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 203 

company, may well have given that source of income 
the enhanced value of 20/. a year. 1 

Thus Shakespeare in the later period of his life 
was earning above 600/. a year in money of the period. 
With so large a professional income he could easily, 
with good management, have completed those pur- 
chases of houses and land at Stratford on which he 
laid out, between 1599 and 161 3, a total sum of 970/., 
or an annual average of 70/. These properties, it 
must be remembered, represented investments, and 
he drew rent from most of them. He traded, too, in 
agricultural produce. There is nothing inherently im- 
probable in the statement of John Ward, the seven- 
teenth-century vicar of Stratford, that in his last years 
' he spent at the rate of a thousand a year, as I have 
heard,' although we may reasonably make allowance 
for exaggeration in the round figures. 

Shakespeare realised his theatrical shares several 
years before his death in 16 16, when he left, ac- 
cording to his will, 350/. in money in addition to an 
extensive real estate and numerous personal belong- 
incomes of i n S s - There was nothing exceptional in this 
fellow- comparative affluence. His friends and fellow- 
actors, Hemingand Condell, amassed equally 
large, if not larger, fortunes. Burbage died in 16 19 
worth 300/. in land, besides personal property; while a 
contemporary actor and theatrical proprietor, Edward 

1 Ten pounds was the ordinary fee paid to actors for a performance 
at the Court of James I. Shakespeare's company appeared annually 
twenty times and more at Whitehall during the early years of James I's 
reign, and Shakespeare, as being both author and actor, doubtless 
received a larger share of the receipts than his colleagues. 



204 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Alleyn, purchased the manor of Dulwich for 10,000/. 
(in money of his own day), and devoted it, with much 
other property, to public uses, at the same time as he 
made ample provision for his family out of the residue 
of his estate. Gifts from patrons may have continued 
occasionally to augment Shakespeare's resources, but 
his wealth can be satisfactorily assigned to better at- 
tested agencies. There is no ground for treating it 
as of mysterious origin. 1 

Between 1599 and 161 1, while London remained 
Shakespeare's chief home, he built up at Stratford a 
large landed estate which his purchase of New Place 
had inaugurated. In 1601 his father died, being buried 
on September 8. He apparently left no will, and the 
poet, as the eldest son, inherited the houses in Henley 
Street, the only portion of the property of the elder 
Shakespeare or of his wife which had not been alien- 
ated to creditors. Shakespeare permitted his mother 
to reside in one of the Henley Street houses till her 
death (she was buried September 9, 1608), and he 
Formation derived a modest rent from the other. On 
of the ]y[ a y I? !6o2, he purchased for 320/. of the 

Stratford, rich landowners William and John Combe 
1601-10. f Stratford 107 acres of arable land near 
the town. The conveyance was delivered, in the 
poet's absence, to his brother Gilbert, ' to the use of 
the within named William Shakespere.' 2 A third 
purchase quickly followed. On September 28, 1602, 
at a Court Baron of the manor of Rowington, one 

1 Cf. Halliwell-Phillipps, i. 312-19; Fleay, Stage, pp. 324-8. 

2 Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 17-19. 



THE PRACTICAL AFFAIRS OF LIFE 205 

Walter Getley transferred to the poet a cottage and 
garden which were situated at Chapel Lane, opposite 
the lower grounds of New Place. They were held 
practically in fee-simple at the annual rental of 2s. 6d. 
It appears from the roll that Shakespeare did not 
attend the manorial court held on the day fixed for 
the transfer of the property at Rowington, and it was 
consequently stipulated then that the estate should 
remain in the hands of the lady of the manor until he 
completed the purchase in person. At a later period he 
was admitted to the copyhold, and he settled the re- 
mainder on his two daughters in fee. In April 1610 
he purchased from the Combes 20 acres of pasture 
land, to add to the 107 of arable land that he had 
acquired of the same owners in 1602. 

As early as 1 598 Abraham Sturley had suggested 
that Shakespeare should purchase the tithes of Strat- 
Th ford. Seven years later, on July 24, 1605, he 

Stratford bought for 440/. of Ralph Huband an 
unexpired term of thirty-one years of a 
ninety-two years' lease of a moiety of the tithes of 
Stratford, Old Stratford, Bishopton, and Welcombe. 
The moiety was subject to a rent of 17/. to the 
Corporation, who were the reversionary owners on 
the lease's expiration, and of 5/. to John Barker, the 
heir of a former proprietor. The investment brought 
Shakespeare, under the most favourable circum- 
stances, no more than an annuity of 38/. ; and the 
refusal of persons who claimed an interest in the 
other moiety to acknowledge the full extent of their 
liability to the Corporation led that body to demand 



206 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

from the poet payments justly due from others. 
After 1609 he joined with two interested persons, 
Richard Lane of Awston and Thomas Greene, the 
town clerk of Stratford, in a suit in Chancery to deter- 
mine the exact responsibilities of all the tithe-owners, 
and in 161 2 they presented a bill of complaint to 
Lord-chancellor Ellesmere, with what result is un- 
known. His acquisition of a part-ownership in the 
tithes was fruitful in legal embarrassments. 

Shakespeare inherited his father's love of litigation, 

and stood rigorously by his rights in all his business 

relations. In March 1600 he recovered 

Recovery 

of small in London a debt of J I. from one John 
debts * Clayton. In July 1604, in the local court 

at Stratford, he sued one Philip Rogers, to whom 
he had supplied since the preceding March malt 
to the value of 1/. 19^. icv/., and had on June 
25 lent 2s. in cash. Rogers paid back 6s., and 
Shakespeare sought the balance of the account, 
1/. 15^. 10^/. During 1608 and 1609 he was at law 
with another fellow-townsman, John Addenbroke. 
On February 15, 1609, Shakespeare, who was ap- 
parently represented by his solicitor and kinsman, 
Thomas Greene, 1 obtained judgment from a jury 
against Addenbroke for the payment of 6/., and 
1 1. $s. costs, but Addenbroke left the town, and the 
triumph proved barren. Shakespeare avenged him- 
self by proceeding against one Thomas Horneby, 
who had acted as the absconding debtor's bail. 2 

1 See p. 195. 2 Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 77-80. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 



XIII 

MATURITY OF GENIUS 

With an inconsistency that is more apparent than 
real, the astute business transactions of these years 
Literar ( l S97~ 1 ^ 11 ) synchronise with the produc- 
work in tion of Shakespeare's noblest literary work 
— of his most sustained and serious efforts in 
comedy, tragedy, and romance. In 1599, after aban- 
doning English history with ' Henry V,' he addressed 
himself to the composition of his three most perfect 
essays in comedy — ' Much Ado about Nothing,' ' As 
You Like It,' and 'Twelfth Night.' Their good- 
humoured tone seems to reveal their author in his 
happiest frame of mind ; in each the gaiety and 
tenderness of youthful womanhood are exhibited in 
fascinating union ; while Shakespeare's lyric gift 
bred no sweeter melodies than the songs with which 
the three plays are interspersed. At the same time 
each comedy enshrines such penetrating reflections on 
mysterious problems of life as mark the stage of 
maturity in the growth of the author's intellect. The 
first two of the three plays were entered on the 
'Stationers' Registers' before August 4, 1600, on 
which day a prohibition was set on their publication, 
as well as on the publication of ' Henry V ' and of Ben 



208 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Jonson's ' Every Man in his Humour.' This was one 
of the many efforts of the acting company to stop the 
publication of plays in the belief that the practice was 
injurious to their rights. The effort was only partially 
successful. * Much Ado,' like ' Henry V,' was pub- 
lished before the close of the year. Neither 'As You 
Like It ' nor ' Twelfth Night,' however, was printed 
till it appeared in the folio. 

In ' Much Ado,' which appears to have been 
written in 1599, tne brilliant and spirited comedy of 
Benedick and Beatrice, and of the blundering watch- 
men Dogberry and Verges, is wholly original ; but the 
< Much sombre story of Hero and Claudio, about which 
Ado -' the comic incident revolves, is drawn from 
an Italian source, either from Bandello (novel, xxii.) 
through Belleforest's ■ Histoires Tragiques,' or from 
Ariosto's 'Orlando Furioso' through Sir John Haring- 
ton's translation (canto v. ). Ariosto's version, in which 
the injured heroine is called Ginevra, and her lover 
Ariodante, had been dramatised before. According 
to the accounts of the Court revels, ' A Historie of 
Ariodante and Ginevra was showed before her 
Majestie on Shrovetuesdaie at night' in 1583. 1 
Throughout Shakespeare's play the ludicrous and 
serious aspects of humanity are blended with a con- 
vincing naturalness. The popular comic actor 
William Kemp filled the role of Dogberry, and 
Cowley appeared as Verges. In both the Quarto of 
1600 and the Folio of 1623 these actors' names are 

1 Accounts of the Revels, ed. Peter Cunningham (Shakespeare 
Society), p. 177; Variorum Shakespeare, 182 1, iii. 406. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 209 

prefixed by a copyist's error to some of the speeches 
allotted to the two characters (act iv. scene ii.). 

' As You Like It,' which quickly followed, is a 
dramatic adaptation of Lodge's romance, ' Rosa- 
■ As You lynde, Euphues Golden Legacie ' ( 1 590), but 
Like it: Shakespeare added three new characters 
of first-rate interest — Jaques, the meditative cynic; 
Touchstone, the most carefully elaborated of all 
Shakespeare's fools; and the hoyden Audrey. Hints 
for the scene of Orlando's encounter with Charles the 
Wrestler, and for Touchstone's description of the 
diverse shapes of a lie, were clearly drawn from a 
book called ' Saviolo's Practise,' a manual of the art 
of self-defence, which appeared in 1595 from the pen 
of Vincentio Saviolo, an Italian fencing-master in 
the service of the Earl of Essex. None of Shake- 
speare's comedies breathes a more placid temper or 
approaches more nearly to a pastoral drama. Yet 
there is no lack of intellectual or poetic energy in the 
enunciation of the contemplative philosophy which is 
cultivated in the Forest of Arden. In Rosalind, Celia, 
Phcebe, and Audrey four types of youthful woman- 
hood are contrasted with the liveliest humour. 

The date of ' Twelfth Night ' is probably 1600, 
'Twelfth and its name, which has no reference to the 
Ni s ht " story, doubtless commemorates the fact that 
it was designed for a Twelfth Night celebration. 
'The new map with the augmentation of the Indies,' 
spoken of by Maria (act hi. sc. ii. 86), was a respect- 
ful reference to the great map of the world or ' hydro- 
graphical description ' which was first issued with 



210 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Hakluyt's 'Voyages' in 1599 or 1600, and first dis- 
closed the full extent of recent explorations of the 
' Indies' in the New World and the Old. 1 Like 
the 'Comedy of Errors,' 'Twelfth Night' achieved 
the distinction early in its career of a presentation at 
an Inn of Court. It was produced at Middle Temple 
Hall on February 2, 160 1-2, and Manningham, a bar- 
rister who was present, described the performance. 2 
Manningham wrote that the piece was ' much like the 
"Comedy of Errors " or " Menechmi" in Plautus, but 
most like and neere to that in Italian called " Inganni." ' 
Two sixteenth-century Italian plays entitled ' Gl' In- 
ganni ' (' The Cheats '), and a third called ' Gl' Ingan- 
nati,' bear resemblance to 'Twelfth Night.' It is 
just possible that Shakespeare had recourse to the 
last, which was based on Bandello's novel of Nicuola, 3 
and was first published at Siena in 1538. But in all 
probability he drew the story solely from the ' His- 
toric of Apolonius and Silla,' which was related in 
' Riche his Farewell to Militarie Profession ' (158 1). 
The author of that volume, Barnabe Riche, translated 
the tale either direct from Bandello's Italian novel 
or from the French rendering of Bandello's work in 
Belleforest's ' Histoires Tragiques.' Romantic pathos, 

1 It was reproduced by the Hakluyt Society to accompany The 
Voyages and Workes of John Davis the Navigator, ed. Captain A. H. 
Markham, i88cx Cf. Mr. Coote's note on the New Map, lxxxv.- 
xcv. A paper on the subject by Mr. Coote also appears in New Shak- 
spere Society 's Tansactions, 1877-9, pt. i. pp. 88-100. 

2 Diary, Camden Soc. p. 18; the Elizabethan Stage Society 
repeated the play on the same stage on February 10, 11, and 12, 
1897. B Bandello's Novelle, ii. 36. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 211 

as in ' Much Ado,' is the dominant note of the main 
plot of ' Twelfth Night,' but Shakespeare neutralises 
the tone of sadness by his mirthful portrayal of 
Malvolio, Sir Toby Belch, Sir Andrew Aguecheek, 
Fabian, the clown Feste, and Maria, all of whom are 
his own creations. The ludicrous gravity of Malvolio 
proved exceptionally popular on the stage. 

In 1 60 1 Shakespeare made a new departure by 
drawing a plot from North's noble translation of 
1 Plutarch's Lives.' : Plutarch is the king of biogra- 
phers, and the deference which Shakespeare paid his 
work by adhering to the phraseology wherever it was 
practicable illustrates his literary discrimination. On 
Plutarch's lives of Julius Caesar, Brutus, and Antony, 
Shakespeare based his historical tragedy of ' Julius 
Caesar.' Weever, in 1601, in his ' Mirror of Martyrs,' 
* Tuiius plainly refers to the masterly speech in the 
Caesar,' Forum at Caesar's funeral which Shakespeare 
put into Antony's mouth. There is no sugges- 
tion of the speech in Plutarch ; hence the composition 
of 'Julius Caesar' may be held to have preceded the 
issue of Weever' s book in 1601. The general topic 
was already familiar on the stage. Polonius told 
Hamlet how, when he was at the university, he 'did 
enact Julius Caesar; he was kill'd in the Capitol: 
Brutus kill'd him.' 2 A play of the same title was 
known as early as 1589, and was acted in 1594 by 
Shakespeare's company. Shakespeare's piece is a 
penetrating study of .political life, and, although the 

1 First published in 1579; 2nd edit. 1595. 

2 Hamlet, act iii. sc. ii. 11. 109-10. 



212 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

murder and funeral of Caesar form the central episode 
and not the climax, the tragedy is thoroughly well 
planned and balanced. Caesar is ironically depicted 
in his dotage. The characters of Brutus, Antony, and 
Cassius, the real heroes of the action, are exhibited 
with faultless art. The fifth act, which presents the 
battle of Philippi in progress, proves ineffective on 
the stage, but the reader never relaxes his interest in 
the fortunes of the vanquished Brutus, whose death 
is the catastrophe. 

While ' Julius Caesar ' was winning its first laurels 
on the stage, the fortunes of the London theatres were 
menaced by two manifestations of unreasoning preju- 
dice on the part of the public. The earlier manifesta- 
tion, although speciously the more serious, was in effect 
innocuous. The puritans of the city of London had 
long agitated for the suppression of all theatrical per- 
formances, and it seemed as if the agitators triumphed 
when they induced the Privy Council on June 22, 1600, 
to issue to the officers of the Corporation of London 
and to the justices of the peace of Middlesex and Sur- 
rey an order forbidding the maintenance of more than 
two playhouses — one in Middlesex (Alleyn's newly 
erected playhouse, the 'Fortune' in Cripplegate), and 
the other in Surrey (the ' Globe ' on the Bankside). 
The contemplated restriction would have deprived 
very many actors of employment, and driven others to 
seek a precarious livelihood in the provinces. Happily, 
disaster was averted by the failure of the municipal 
authorities and the magistrates of Surrey and Middle- 
sex to make the order operative. All the London 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 213 

theatres that were already in existence went on their 
way unchecked. 1 

More calamitous was a temporary reverse of fort- 
une which Shakespeare's company, in common with 
The strife the other companies of adult actors, suffered 
D e een soon afterwards at the hands, not of fanatical 

acu.t and 

boy actors, enemies of the drama, but of playgoers who 
were its avowed supporters. The company of boy- 
actors, chiefly recruited from the choristers of the 
Chapel Royal, and known as "the Children of the 
Chapel," had since 1597 been installed at the new 
theatre in Blackfriars, and after 1600 the fortunes of 
the veterans, who occupied rival stages, were put in 
jeopardy by the extravagant outburst of public favour 
that the boys'' performances evoked. In 'Hamlet,' 
the play which followed 'Julius Caesar,' Shakespeare 
pointed out the perils of the situation. 2 The adult 

1 On December 31, 1601, the Lords of the Council sent letters to the 
Lord Mayor of London and to the Magistrates of Surrey and Middlesex 
expressing their surprise that no steps had yet been taken to limit the 
number of playhouses in accordance with ' our order set down and 
prescribed about a year and a half since.' But nothing followed, and 
no more was heard officially of the Council's order until 16 19. when the 
Corporation of London remarked on its practical abrogation at the 
same time as they directed the suppression ( which was not carried at 
of the Blackfriars Theatre. All the documents on this subject are printed 
from the Privy Council Register by Hailiwell-Phillipps, i. 307-9. 

2 The passage, act ii. sc. ii. 348-94, which deals in ample detail 
with the subject, only appears in the folio version of 1623. In the 
first quarto a very curt reference is made to the misfortunes of the 
' tragedians of the city ' : 

y faith, my lord, novel tie carries it away, 
F;r the prir.ripal publike audience that 
Came to them are turned to private playes 
And to the humours of children. 

' Private playes ; were plays acted by amateurs, with whom the 
'Children' might well be classed. 



214 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

actors, Shakespeare asserted, were prevented from 
performing in London through no falling off in their 
efficiency, but by the ' late innovation ' of the children's 
vogue. 1 They were compelled to go on tour in the 
provinces, at the expense of their revenues and repu- 
tation, because 'an aery [i.e. nest] of children, little 
eyases [i.e. young hawks] ' dominated the theatrical 
world, and monopolised public applause. ' These 
are now the fashion,' the dramatist lamented, 2 and he 
made the topic the text of a reflection on the fickle- 
ness of public taste : 

Hamlet. Do the boys carry it away ? 

Rosencrantz. Ay that they do, my lord, Hercules and his load too. 

Hamlet. It is not very strange; for my uncle is King of Denmark, 
and those that would make mows at him while my father lived, give 
twenty, forty, fifty, a hundred ducats apiece for his picture in little. 

Jealousies in the ranks of the dramatists accent- 
uated the actors' difficulties. Ben Jonson was, at the 
end of the sixteenth century, engaged in a fierce 
personal quarrel with two of his fellow-dramatists, 
Marston and Dekker. The adult actors generally 
avowed sympathy with Jonson's foes. Jonson, by 
way of revenge, sought an offensive alliance with ' the 
Children of the Chapel.' Under careful tuition the 
boys proved capable of performing much the same 
pieces as the men. To ' the children ' Jonson offered 

1 All recent commentators follow Steevens in interpreting the ' late 
innovation' as the Order of the Privy Council of June 1600, restricting 
the number of the London playhouses to two; but that order, which 
was never put in force, in no way affected the actors' fortunes. The 
First Quarto's reference to the perils attaching to the ' noveltie ' of the 
boys' performances indicates the true meaning. 

2 Hamlet, act ii. sc. ii. 349-64. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 21 5 

in 1600 his comical satire of ' Cynthia's Revels,' in 
which he held up to ridicule Dekker, Marston, and 
their actor-friends. The play, when acted by 'the 
children ' at the Blackfriars Theatre, was warmly 
welcomed by the audience. Next year Jonson 
repeated his manoeuvre with greater effect. He 
learnt that Marston and Dekker were conspiring with 
the actors of Shakespeare's company to attack him 
in a piece called ' Satiro-Mastix, or the Untrussing of 
the Humorous Poet.' He anticipated their design 
by producing, again with ' the Children of the Chapel,' 
his ' Poetaster,' which was throughout a venomous 
invective against his enemies — dramatists and actors 
alike. Shakespeare's company retorted by producing 
Dekker and Marston's ' Satiro-Mastix ' at the Globe 
Theatre next year. But Jonson's action had given 
new life to the vogue of the children. Playgoers took 
sides in the struggle, and their attention was for a 
season riveted, to the exclusion of topics more ger- 
mane to their province, on the actors' and dramatists' 
boisterous war of personalities. 1 

1 At the moment offensive personalities seemed to have infected all 
the London theatres. On May 10, 1601, the Privy Council called the 
attention of the Middlesex magistrates to the abuse covertly levelled by 
the actors of the ' Curtain ' at gentlemen ' of good desert and quality,' 
and directed the magistrates to examine all plays before they were 
produced {Privy Council Register}. Jonson subsequently issued an 
' apologetical dialogue ' (appended to printed copies of the Poetaster), 
in which he somewhat truculently qualified his hostility to the 
players : 

Now for the players 'tis true I tax'd them 

And yet but some, and those so sparingly 

As all the rest might have sat still unquestioned, 

Had they but had the wit or conscience 



2l6 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

In his detailed references to the conflict in 
shake- ' Hamlet ' Shakespeare protested against the 
speare's abusive comments on the men-actors of ' the 

references ' . 

to the common stages or public theatres which 

struggle. were puHnto the children's mouths. Rosen- 
crantz declared that the children 'so berattle [i.e. assail] 
the common stages — so they call them — that many 
wearing rapiers are afraid of goose-quills, and dare 
scarce come thither [i.e. to the public theatres].' 
Hamlet in pursuit of the theme pointed out that the 
writers who encouraged the vogue of the ' child- 
actors ' did them a poor service, because when the 
boys should reach men's estate they would run the 
risk, if they continued on the stage, of the same insults 
and neglect which now threatened their seniors. 

Hamlet. What are they children? Who maintains 'em? how are 
they escoted [i.e. paid] ? Will they pursue the quality [i.e. the actor's 
profession] no longer than they can sing? Will they not say afterwards, 
if they should grow themselves to common players — as it is most like, 
if their means are no better — their writers do them wrong to make 
them exclaim against their own succession? 

Rosencrantz. Faith, there has been much to do on both sides, 
and the nation holds it no sin to tarre [i.e. incite] them to controversy; 
there was for a while no money bid for argument, unless the poet and 
the player went to cuffs in the question. 

Hamlet. Is it possible? 

Guildenstern. O, there has been much throwing about of brains ! 



To think well of themselves. But impotent they 

Thought each man's vice belonged to their whole tribe; 

And much good do it them. What they have done against me 

I am not moved with, if it gave them meat 

Or got them clothes, 'tis well; that was their end, 

Only amongst them I am sorry for 

Some better natures by the rest so drawn 

To run in that vile line. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 2\*] 

Shakespeare clearly favoured the adult actors in 
their rivalry with the boys, but he wrote more like a 
disinterested spectator than an active partisan when 
he made specific reference to the strife between the 
poet Ben Jonson and the players. In the prologue 
to ' Troilus and Cressida ' which he penned in 1603, 
he warned his hearers with obvious allusion to Ben 
Jonson's battles that he hesitated to identify himself 
with either actor or poet. 3 Passages in Ben Jonson's 
' Poetaster,' moreover, pointedly suggest that Shake- 
speare cultivated so assiduously an attitude of neutral- 
ity that Jonson acknowledged him to be qualified for 
the role of peacemaker. The gentleness of disposition 
with which Shakespeare was invariably credited by his 
friends would have well fitted him for such an office. 

Jonson figures personally in the ' Poetaster ' under 
the name of Horace. Episodically Horace and his 
jonson's friends, Tibullus and Gallus, eulogise the 
'Poetaster. 1 wor k and genius of another character, Virgil, 
in terms so closely resembling those which Jonson 
is known to have applied to Shakespeare that they 
may be regarded as intended to apply to him. (act 
v. sc. L). Jonson points out that Virgil, by his pene- 
trating intuition, achieved the great effects which 
others laboriously sought to reach through rules of 
art. 

His learning labours not the school-like gloss 
That most consists of echoing words and terms . . . 
Nor any long or far-fetched circumstance — 
Wrapt in the curious generalities of arts — 

1 See p. 229, note I, ad. fin. 



2l8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

But a direct and analytic sum 
Of all the worth and first effects of arts. 
And for his poesy, 'tis so rammed with life 
That it shall gather strength of life with being, 
And live hereafter, more admired than now. 

Tibullus gives Virgil equal credit for having in his 
writings touched with telling truth upon every vicis- 
situde of human existence. 

That which he hath writ 
Is with such judgment laboured and distilled 
Through all the needful uses of our lives 
That, could a man remember but his lines, 
He should not touch at any serious point 
But he might breathe his spirit out of him. 

Finally, Virgil in the play is nominated by Caesar 
to act as judge between Horace and his libellers, and 
he advises the administration of purging pills to the 
offenders. That course of treatment is adopted with 
satisfactory results. 1 

As against this interpretation, one contemporary 
witness has been held to testify that Shakespeare 
stemmed the tide of Jonson's embittered activity by 
no peace-making interposition, but by joining his 
foes, and by administering, with their aid, the identical 
course of medicine which in the ' Poetaster ' is meted 
out to his enemies. In the same year (i6oi)as the 'Poet- 
aster ' was produced, ' The Return from Parnassus ' 
— a third piece in a trilogy of plays — was ' acted by 

1 The proposed identification of Virgil in the ' Poetaster ' with 
Chapman has little to recommend it. Chapman's literary work did 
not justify the commendations which were bestowed on Virgil in the 
play. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 219 

the students in St. John's College, Cambridge.' In 
this piece, as in its two predecessors, Shakespeare 
received, both as a playwright and a poet, high com- 
mendation, although his poems were judged to reflect 
somewhat too largely ' love's lazy foolish languish- 
ment.' The actor Burbage was introduced in his 
own name instructing an aspirant to the actor's 
profession in the part of Richard the Third, and the 
familiar lines from Shakespeare's play — 

Now is the winter of our discontent 

Made glorious summer by this sun of York — 

are recited by the pupil as part of his lesson. Subse- 
quently in a prose dialogue between Shakespeare's 
fellow-actors Burbage and Kempe, Kempe remarks 
of University dramatists, 'Why, here's our fellow 
Shakespeare puts them all down ; aye, and Ben Jon- 
son, too. O ! that Ben Jonson is a pestilent fellow. 
He brought up Horace, giving the poets a pill ; but 
our fellow Shakespeare hath given him a purge that 
made him bewray his credit.' Burbage adds : ' He is 
a shrewd fellow, indeed.' This perplexing passage 
has been held to mean that Shakespeare took a 
decisive part against Jonson in the controversy with 
Dekker and Dekker's actor-friends. But such a con- 
shake- elusion is nowhere corroborated, and seems 
speare's ^ k e confuted by the eulogies of Virgil 

alleged . J & & 

partisan- in the ' Poetaster ' and by the general hand- 
ship. ling of the theme in ' Hamlet.' The words 

quoted from ' The Return from Parnassus ' hardly 
admit of a literal interpretation. Probably the 
' purge ' that Shakespeare was alleged by the author 



220 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of ' The Return from Parnassus ' to have given Jonson 
meant no more than that Shakespeare had signallv 
outstripped Jonson in popular esteem. As the author 
of 'Julius Caesar,' he had just proved his command 
of topics that were peculiarly suited to Jonson's vein, 1 
and had in fact outrun his churlish comrade on his 
own ground. 

1 The most scornful criticism that Jonson is known to have passed 
on any composition by Shakespeare was aimed at a passage in Julius 
Ceesar, and as Jonson's attack is barely justifiable on literary grounds, 
it is fair to assume that the play was distasteful to him from other con- 
siderations. ' Many times,' Jonson wrote of Shakespeare in his 
Timber, ' hee fell into those things [which] could not escape laughter : 
As when hee said in the person of Ceesar, one speaking to him [i.e. 
Gesar]; Ceesar, thou dost me -wrong. Hee [i.e. Caesar] replyed : Ceesar 
did never wrong, butt with just cause : and such like, which were 
ridiculous.' Jonson derisively quoted the same passage in the induc- 
tion to The Staple of News (1625) : ' Cry you mercy, you did not wrong 
but with just cause.' Possibly the words that were ascribed by Jonson 
to Shakespeare's character of Ceesar appeared in the original version of 
the play, but owing perhaps to Jonson's captious criticism they do not 
figure in the Folio version, the sole version that has reached us. The only 
words there that correspond with Jonson's quotation are Caesar's remark : 

Know, Caesar doth not wrong, nor without cause 
Will he be satisfied 

(act hi. sc. i. 11. 47-8). The rhythm and sense seem to require the re- 
insertion after the word 'wrong' of the phrase 'but with just cause,' 
which Jonson needlessly reprobated. Leonard Digges (1 588-1635), 
one of Shakespeare's admiring critics, emphasises the superior popu- 
larity of Shakespeare's Julius Ceesar in the theatre to Ben Jonson's 
Roman play of Catiline, in his eulogistic lines on Shakespeare 
'published after Digges's death in the 1640 edition of Shakespeare's 
Poems) : 

So have I seen when Csesar would appear, 

And on the stage at half-sword parley were 

Brutus and Cassius — oh, how the audience 

Were j-avish'd, with what wonder they went thence; 

When some new day they would not brook a line 

Of tedious, though well-laboured, Catiline. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 221 

At any rate, in the tragedy that Shakespeare 
brought out in the year following the production of 
'Julius Caesar,' he finally left Jonson and all friends 
and foes lagging far behind both in achievement and 
reputation. This new exhibition of the force of his 
genius re-established, too, the ascendency of the adult 
actors who interpreted his work, and the boys' su- 
premacy was quickly brought to an end. In 1602 
Shakespeare produced 'Hamlet,' 'that piece of his 
which most kindled English hearts.' The story of the 
' Hamlet,' Prince of- Denmark had been popular on the 
1602. stage as early as 1589 in a lost dramatic ver- 

sion by another writer — doubtless Thomas Kyd, whose 
tragedies of blood, ' The Spanish Tragedy ' and ' Jero- 
nimo,' long held the Elizabethan stage. To that lost 
version of ' Hamlet ' Shakespeare's tragedy certainly 
owed much. 1 The story was also accessible in the 

1 I wrote on this point in the article on Thomas Kyd in the 
Dictionary of National Biography (vol. xxxi.) : 'The argument in 
favour of Kyd's authorship of a pre-Shakespearean play (now lost) on 
the subject of Hamlet deserves attention. Nash in 1589, when 
describing [in his preface to Menaphon~\ the typical literary hack, 
who at almost every point suggests Kyd, notices that in addition to 
his other accomplishments " he will afford you whole Hamlets, I 
should say handfuls of tragical speeches." Other references in popular 
tracts and plays of like date prove that in an early tragedy concern- 
ing Hamlet there was a ghost who cried repeatedly, " Hamlet, 
revenge ! " and that this expression took rank in Elizabethan slang 
beside the vernacular quotations from [Kyd's sanguinary tragedy of] 
Jeronimo, such as " What outcry calls me from my naked bed," and 
" Beware, Hieronimo, go by, go by." The resemblance between the 
stories of Hajnlet and Jeronimo suggests that the former would have 
supplied Kyd with a congenial plot. In Jeronimo a father seeks to 
avenge his son's murder; in Hamlet the theme is the same with the 



222 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

' Histoires Tragiques,' of Belleforest, who adapted it 
from the ' Historia Danica ' of Saxo Grammaticus. 1 
No English translation of Belleforest's ' Hystorie of 
Hamblet' appeared before 1608; Shakespeare doubt- 
less read it in the French. But his authorities give 
little hint of what was to emerge from his study of 
them. 

Burbage created the title-part in Shakespeare's 
tragedy, and its success on the stage led to the play's 
publication immediately afterwards. The bibliography 
of ' Hamlet ' offers a puzzling problem. On July 26, 
1602, 'A Book called the Revenge of Hamlet, Prince 
The prob- of Denmark, as it was lately acted by the 
pubiica- S Lord Chamberlain his Servants,' was entered 
tion. on the Stationers' Company's Registers, and 

it was published in quarto next year by N[icholas] 

position of father and son reversed. In Jeronimo the avenging fathet 
resolves to reach his end by arranging for the performance of a play in 
the presence of those whom he suspects of the murder of his son, and 
there is good ground for crediting the lost tragedy of Hamlet with a 
similar play-scene. Shakespeare's debt to the lost tragedy is a matter 
of conjecture, but the stilted speeches of the play-scene in his Hamlet 
read like intentional parodies of Kyd's bombastic efforts in The Spanish 
Tragedy, and it is quite possible that they were directly suggested by 
an almost identical episode in a lost Hamlet by the same author.' 
Shakespeare elsewhere shows acquaintance with Kyd's work. He 
places in the mouth of Kit Sly in The Taming of The Shrexv the current 
phrase ' Go by, Jeronimy,' from The Spanish Tragedy. Shakespeare 
quotes verbatim a line from the same piece in Much Ado About Nothing 
(1. i. 271) : ' In time the savage bull doth bear the yoke;' but Kyd prac- 
tically borrowed that line from Watson's Passionate Centurie (No. xlvii.), 
where Shakespeare may have met it. 

1 Cf. Gericke und Max Moltke, Hamlet- Quellen, Leipzig, 1881. 
The story was absorbed into Scandinavian mythology : cf. Ambales- 
Saga, edited by Mr. Israel Gollancz, 1898. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 223 

L[ing] and John Trundell. The title-page stated that 
the piece had been ' acted divers times in the city of 
~, ,,. . London, as also in the two Universities of 

The tirst ' 

Quarto, Cambridge and Oxford and elsewhere.' The 
text here appeared in a rough and im- 
perfect state. In all probability it was a piratical 
and carelessly transcribed copy of Shakespeare's first 
draft of the play, in which he drew largely on the 
older piece. 

A revised version, printed from a more complete 
and accurate manuscript, was published in 1604 as 
'The Tragical History of Hamlet Prince of Denmark, 
by William Shakespeare, newly imprinted and en- 
The larged to almost as much again as it was, 

Ouarto according to the true and perfect copy.' This 
1604. was printed by I[ames] R[oberts] for the 

publisher Nicholas] L[ing]. The concluding words 
— ' according to the true and perfect copy ' — of the 
title-page of the second quarto were intended to 
stamp its predecessor as surreptitious and unauthentic. 
But it is clear that the second quarto was not a perfect 
version of the play. It was itself printed from a copy 
which had been curtailed for acting purposes. 

A third version (long the textus receptus) figured 
in the folio of 1623. Here many passages, not to be 
found in the quartos, appear for the first time, but a 
The Folio few others that appear in the quartos are 
Version. omitted. The folio text probably came 
nearest to the original manuscript; but it, too, followed 
an acting copy which had been abbreviated some- 
what less drastically than the second quarto and in a 



224 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

different fashion. 1 Theobald in his ' Shakespeare 
Restored' (1726) made the first scholarly attempt to 
form a text from a collation of the First Folio with 
the second quarto, and Theobald's text with further 
embellishments by Sir Thomas Hanmer, Edward 
Capell, and the Cambridge editors of 1866, is now 
generally adopted. 

' Hamlet ' was the only drama by Shakespeare 
that was acted in his lifetime at the two Universities. 
It has since attracted more attention from actors, 
playgoers, and readers of all capacities than any other 
of Shakespeare's plays. Its world-wide popularity 

, . from its author's day to our own, when it is 

Popularity •> ' 

of ' Ham- as warmly welcomed in the theatres of France 
and Germany as in those of England and 
America, is the most striking of the many testimonies 
to the eminence of Shakespeare's dramatic instinct. 
At a first glance there seems little in the play to 
attract the uneducated or the unreflecting. ' Hamlet' 
is mainly a psychological effort, a study of the reflec- 
tive temperament in excess. The action develops 
slowly; at times there is no movement at all. Except 
' Antony and Cleopatra,' which exceeds it by sixty 
lines, the piece is the longest of Shakespeare's plays, 
while the total length of Hamlet's speeches far exceeds 
that of those allotted by Shakespeare to any other 
of his characters. Humorous relief is, it is true, 

1 Cf. Hamlet — parallel texts of the first and second quarto, and 
first folio — ed. Wilhelm Vietor, Marburg, 1891; The Devonshire 
Hamlets, i860, parallel texts of the two quartos edited by Mr. Sam 
Timmins; Ha?nlet, ed. George Macdonald, 1885, a study with the text 
of the folio. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 22 5 

effectively supplied to the tragic theme by Polonius 
and the grave-diggers, and if the topical references to 
contemporary theatrical history (n. ii. 350-89) could 
only count on an appreciative reception from an 
Elizabethan audience, the pungent censure of actors' 
perennial defects is calculated to catch the ear of the 
average playgoer of all ages. But it is not to these 
subsidiary features that the universality of the play's 
vogue can be attributed. It is the intensity of 
interest which Shakespeare contrives to excite in 
the character of the hero that explains the position 
of the play in popular esteem. The play's un- 
rivalled power of attraction lies in the pathetic 
fascination exerted on minds of almost every calibre 
by the central figure — a high-born youth of chivalric 
instincts and finely developed intellect, who, when 
stirred to avenge in action a desperate private wrong, 
is foiled by introspective workings of the brain that 
paralyse the will. 

Although the difficulties of determining the date 
of ' Troilus and Cressida ' are very great, there are 
•Troiius man y grounds for assigning its composition 
and to the early days of 1603. In 1599 Dekker 

da ° and Chettle were engaged by Henslowe to 
prepare for the Earl of Nottingham's company — a 
rival of Shakespeare's company — a play of ' Troilus 
and Cressida,' of which no trace survives. It doubtless 
suggested the topic to Shakespeare. On February 7, 
1602-3, James Roberts obtained a license for 'the 
booke of Troilus and Cresseda as yt is acted by my 
Q 



226 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Lord Chamberlens men,' i.e. Shakespeare's company. 1 
Roberts printed the second quarto of ' Hamlet' and 
others of Shakespeare's plays ; but his effort to pub- 
lish ' Troilus ' proved abortive, owing to the interpo- 
sition of the players. Roberts's * book ' was probably 
Shakespeare's play. The metrical characteristics 
of Shakespeare's ' Troilus and Cressida ' — the reg- 
ularity of the blank verse — powerfully confirm the 
date of composition which Roberts's license suggests. 
Six years later, however, on January 28, 1608-9, a 
new license for the issue of ' a booke called the his- 
tory of Troylus and Cressida ' was granted to other 
publishers, Richard Bonian and Henry Walley, 2 and 
these publishers, more fortunate than Roberts, soon 
printed a quarto with Shakespeare's full name as 
author. The text seems fairly authentic, but excep- 
tional obscurity attaches to the circumstances of 
the publication. Some copies of the book bear an 
ordinary type of title-page stating that the piece was 
printed ' as it was acted by the King's majesties 
servants at the Globe.' But in other copies, which 
differ in no way in regard to the text of the play, 
there was substituted for this title-page a more pre- 
tentious announcement running : ' The famous His- 
toric of Troylus and Cresseid, excellently expressing 
the beginning of their loues with the conceited wooing 
of Pandarus, prince of Lacia.' After this pompous 
title-page there was inserted, for the first and only 
time in the case of a play by Shakespeare that was 

1 Arber's Transcript of the Stationers' Registers, iii. 226. 

2 lb. iii. 400. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 227 

published in his lifetime, an advertisement or preface. 
In this interpolated page an anonymous scribe, writ- 
ing in the name of the publishers, paid bombastic 
and high-flown compliments to Shakespeare as a 
writer of 'comedies,' and defiantly boasted that the 
'grand possessers ' — i.e. the owners — of the manu- 
sci ipt deprecated its publication. By way of enhancing 
the value of what were obviously stolen wares, it was 
falsely added that the piece was new and unacted. 
This address was possibly the brazen reply of the 
publishers to a more than usually emphatic protest 
on the part of players or dramatist against the print- 
ing of the piece. The editors of the Folio evinced 
distrust of the quarto edition by printing their text 
from a different copy showing many deviations, 
which were not always for the better. 

The work, which in point of construction shows 
signs of haste, and in style is exceptionally unequal, 
is the least attractive of the efforts of Shakespeare's 
middle life. The story is based on a romantic legend 
t, : . of the Trojan war, which is of mediaeval 

Treatment _ J ' 

of the , origin. Shakespeare had possibly read Chap- 
man's translation of Homer's ' Iliad,' but he 
owed his plot to Chaucer's ' Troilus and Cresseid ' and 
Lydgate's 'Troy Book.' In defiance of his authori- 
ties he presented Cressida as a heartless coquette ; 
the poets who had previously treated her story — 
Boccaccio, Chaucer, Lydgate, and Robert Henryson 
— had imagined her as a tender-hearted, if frail, 
beauty, with claims on their pity rather than on their 
scorn. But Shakespeare's innovation is dramatically 



228 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

effective, and accords with strictly moral canons. 
The charge frequently brought against the dramatist 
that in ' Troilus and Cressida ' he cynically invested 
the Greek heroes of classical antiquity with con- 
temptible characteristics is ill supported by the text 
of the play. Ulysses, Nestor, and Agamemnon figure 
in Shakespeare's play as brave generals and sagacious 
statesmen, and in their speeches Shakespeare con- 
centrated a marvellous wealth of pithily expressed 
philosophy, much of which has fortunately obtained 
proverbial currency. Shakespeare's conception of 
the Greeks followed traditional lines except in the 
case of Achilles, whom he transforms into a brutal 
coward. And that portrait quite legitimately inter- 
preted the selfish, unreasoning, and exorbitant pride 
with which the warrior was credited by Homer and 
his imitators. 

Shakespeare's treatment of his theme cannot 
therefore be fairly construed, as some critics construe 
it, into a petty-minded protest against the honour 
paid to the ancient Greeks and to the form and sen- 
timent of their literature by more learned dramatists of 
the day, like Ben Jonson and Chapman. Although 
Shakespeare knew the Homeric version of the Trojan 
war, he worked in ' Troilus and Cressida ' upon a 
mediaeval romance, which was practically unin- 
fluenced either for good or evil by the classical 
spirit. 1 

1 Less satisfactory is the endeavour that has been made by Mr. F. G. 
Fleay and Mr. George Wyndham to treat T?-oilus and Cressida as Shake- 
speare's contribution to the embittered controversy of 1 601-2, between 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 229 

Despite the association of Shakespeare's company 
with the rebellion of 1601, and its difficulties with the 
children of the Chapel Royal, he and his fellow-actors 

Jonson and Marston and Dekker and their actor-friends, and to represent 
it as a pronouncement against Jonson. According to this fanciful view, 
Shakespeare held up Jonson to savage ridicule in Ajax, while in Thersites 
he denounced Marston, despite Marston's intermittent antagonism 
to Jonson, which entitled him to freedom from attack by Jonson's 
foes. The appearance of the word ' mastic ' in the line (1. iii. 73) 
• When rank Thersites opes his mastic jaws ' is treated as proof 
of Shakespeare's identification of Thersites with Marston, who 
used the pseudonym ' Therio-mastix ' in his Scourge of Villainy. 
It would be as reasonable to identify him with Dekker, who 
wrote the greater part of Satiro-mastix. 'Mastic' is doubtless an 
adjective formed without recondite significance from the substantive 
' mastic,' i.e. the gum commonly used at the time for stopping decayed 
teeth. No hypothesis of a polemical intention is needed to account for 
Shakespeare's conception of Ajax or Thersites. There is no trait in 
either character as depicted by Shakespeare which a reading of Chap- 
man's Homer would fail to suggest. The controversial interpretation of 
the play is in conflict with chronology (for Troilus cannot, on any show- 
ing, be assigned to the period of the war between Jonson and Dekker, 
in 1 601-2), and it seems confuted by the facts and arguments already 
adduced in the discussion of the theatrical conflict (see pp. 213-19). 
If more direct disproof be needed, it may be found in Shakespeare's 
prologue to Troilus, where there is a good-humoured and expressly 
pacific allusion to the polemical aims of Jonson's Poetaster. Jonson 
had introduced into his play ' an armed prologue ' on account, he 
asserted, of his enemies' menaces. Shakespeare, after describing in 
his prologue to Troilus the progress of the Trojan war before his story 
opened, added that his ' prologue ' presented itself ' ar??t'd,' not to 
champion ' author's pen or actor's voice,' but simply to announce in a 
guise befitting the warlike subject-matter that the play began in the 
middle of the conflict between Greek and Trojan, and not at the begin- 
ning. These words of Shakespeare put out of court any interpretation 
of Shakespeare's play that would represent it as a contribution to the 
theatrical controversy. 



230 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

retained its hold on Court favour till the close of Eliza- 
Queen beth's reign. As late as February 2, 1603, 
Elizabeth's ^ Q company entertained the dying Queen 
March 26, at Richmond. Her death on March 26, 
l6o 3- 1603, drew from Shakespeare's early eulo- 

gist, Chettle, a vain appeal to him under the fanciful 
name of Melicert, to 

Drop from his honied muse one sable teare, 
To mourne her death that graced his desert, 
And to his laies opened her royal eare. 1 

But except on sentimental grounds, the Queen's death 
justified no lamentation on the part of Shakespeare. 
On the withdrawal of one royal patron he and his 
friends at once found another, who proved far more 
liberal and appreciative. 

On May 19, 1603, James I, very soon after his 
accession, extended to Shakespeare and other mem- 
bers of the Lord Chamberlain's company a very 
marked and valuable recognition. To them he 
granted under royal letters patent a license ' freely 
to use and exercise the arte and facultie of playing 
comedies, tragedies, histories, enterludes, moralls, 
pastoralles, stage-plaies, and such other like as they 
have already studied, or hereafter shall use or studie 
as well for the recreation of our loving subjectes 
as for our solace and pleasure, when we shall thinke 
good to see them during our pleasure.' The Globe 
Theatre was noted as the customary scene of their 
labours, but permission was granted to them to per- 

1 England' 's Mourning Garment, 1603, sign. D. 3. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 23 1 

form in the town-hall or moot-hall of any country 
James i's town. Nine actors are named. Lawrence 
patronage. Fletcher stands first on the list; he had 
already performed before James in Scotland in 1599 
and 1601. Shakespeare comes second and Burbage 
third. The company to which they belonged was 
thenceforth styled the King's company ; its members 
became 'the King's Servants,' and they took rank with 
the Grooms of the Chamber. 1 Shakespeare's plays 
were thenceforth repeatedly porformed in James's 
presence, and Oldys" related that James wrote Shake- 
speare a letter in his own hand, which was at one 
time in the possession of Sir William D'Avenant, 
and afterwards, according to Lintot, in that of John 
Sheffield, first duke of Buckingham. 

In the autumn and winter of 1603 the prevalence 
of the plague led to the closing of the theatres in 
London. The King's players were compelled to 
make a prolonged tour in the provinces, which 
entailed some loss of income. For two months from 
the third week in October, the Court was tempo- 
rarily installed at Wilton, the residence of William 
Herbert, third earl of Pembroke, and late in Novem- 
ber the company was summoned by the royal officers 

1 At the same time the earl of Worcester's company was taken 
into the Queen's patronage, and its members were known as ' the 
Queen's servants,' while the earl of Nottingham's company was taken 
into the patronage of the Prince of Wales, and its members were 
known as the Prince's servants. This extended patronage of actors by 
the royal family was noticed as especially honourable to the King by one 
of his contemporary panegyrists, Gilbert Dugdale, in his Time Trium- 
phant, 1604, sig. B. 



232 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

to perform in the royal presence. The actors travelled 
from Mortlake to Salisbury ' unto the Courte afore- 
saide,' and their performance took place at Wilton 
House on December 2. They received next day 
' upon the Councells warrant ' the large sum of 30/. 
' by way of his majesties reward.' 1 Many other 
gracious marks of royal favour followed. On March 
15, 1604, Shakespeare and eight other actors of the 
company walked from the Tower of London to West- 
minster in the procession which accompanied the 
King on his formal entry into London. Each actor 
received four-and-a-half yards of scarlet cloth to wear 
as a cloak on the occasion, and in the document 
authorising the grant Shakespeare's name stands first 
on the list. 2 The dramatist Dekker was author of a 
somewhat bombastic account of the elaborate cere- 
monial, which rapidly ran through three editions. On 



1 The entry, which appears in the accounts of the Treasurer of the 
Chamber, was first printed in 1842 in Cunningham's Extracts from the 
Accounts of the Revels at Court, p. xxxiv. A comparison of Cunning- 
ham's transcript with the original in the Public Record Office {Audit 
Office-Declared Accounts, Treasurer of the Chamber, bundle 388, roll 
41) shows that it is accurate. The earl of Pembroke was in no way re- 
sponsible for the performance at Wilton House. At the time, the Court 
was formally installed in his house (cf. Cal. State Papers, Dom. 
1603-10, pp. 47-59), and the Court officers commissioned the players 
to perform there, and paid all their expenses. The alleged tradition, 
recently promulgated for the first time by the owners of Wilton, that As 

You Like It was performed on the occasion, is unsupported by con- 
temporary evidence. 

2 The grant is transcribed in the New Shakspere Society's Trans- 
actions, 1877-9, Appendix 11., from the Lord Chamberlain's papers in 
the Public Record Office, where it is now numbered 660. The number 
allotted it in the Transactions is obsolete. 



MATURITY OF GENIUS 233 

April 9, 1604, the King gave further proof of his 
friendly interest in the fortunes of his actors by 
causing an official letter to be sent to the Lord 
Mayor of London and the Justices of the Peace for 
Middlesex and Surrey, bidding them 'permit and 
suffer ' the King's players to ' exercise their playes ' 
at their ' usual house,' the Globe. 1 Four months 
later — in August — every member of the company 
was summoned by the King's order to attend at 
Somerset House during the fortnight's sojourn 
there of the Spanish ambassador extraordinary, 
Juan Fernandez de Velasco, duke de Frias, and 
Constable of Castile, who came to London to ratify 
the treaty of peace between England and Spain, 
and was magnificently entertained by the English 
Court. 2 Between All Saints' Day [November 1] 

1 A contemporary copy of this letter, which declared the Queen's 
players acting at the Fortune and the Prince's players at the Curtain 
to be entitled to the same privileges as the King's players, is at Dulwich 
College (cf. G. F. Warner's Catalogue of the Dulwich Manuscripts, 
pp. 26-7). Collier printed it in his New Facts with fraudulent addi- 
tions, in which the names of Shakespeare and other actors figured. 

• 2 Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps, in his Outlines, i. 213, cites a royal order 
to this effect, but gives no authority, and I have sought in vain for the 
document at the Public Record Office, at the British Museum, and 
elsewhere. But there is no reason to doubt the fact that Shakespeare 
and his fellow-actors took part, as Grooms of the Chamber, in the 
ceremonies attending the Constable's visit to London. In the un- 
printed accounts of Edmund Tilney, master of the revels, for the 
year October 1603 to October 1604, charge is made for his three 
days' attendance with four men to direct the entertainments 'at the 
receaving of the Constable of Spayne ' (Public Record Office, Declared 
Accounts, Pipe Office Roll 2805). The magnificent festivities culmi- 
nated in a splendid banquet given in the Constable's honour by James I 
at Whitehall on Sunday, August \% — the day on which the treaty 



234 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

and the ensuing Shrove Tuesday, which fell early 
in February 1605, Shakespeare's company gave no 
fewer than eleven performances at Whitehall in the 
royal presence. 1 

was signed. In the morning all the members of the royal household 
accompanied the Constable in formal procession from Somerset House. 
After the banquet, at which the earls of Pembroke and Southampton 
acted as stewards, there was a ball, and the King's guests subsequently 
witnessed exhibitions of bear baiting, bull baiting, rope dancing, and 
feats of horsemanship. (Cf. Stow's Chronicle, 1631, pp. 845-6, and 
a Spanish pamphlet, Relation de la Jornada del exc mo Condestabile 
di Castilla, etc., Antwerp, 1604, 4to, which was summarised in 
Ellis's Original Letters, 2nd series, vol. iii. pp. 207-15, and was partly 
translated in Mr. W. B. Rye's England as seen by Foreigners, pp. 1 1 7- 

24). 

1 At the Bodleian Library (MS. Rawlinson, A 204) are the original 
accounts of Lord Stanhope of Harrington, Treasurer of the Chamber 
for various (detached) years in the early part of James I's reign. These 
documents show that Shakespeare's company acted at Court on 
November I and 4, December 26 and 28, 1604, and on January 7 
and 8, February 2 and 3, and the evenings of the following Shrove 
Sunday, Shrove Monday, and Shrove Tuesday, 1605. 



THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 2^5 



XIV 

THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 

Under the incentive of such exalted patronage, 
Shakespeare's activity redoubled, but his work shows 
•Othello' none of the conventional marks of literature 
sure fo? ea ~ *hat 1S P r od uce( i m the blaze of Court favour. 
Measure.' The first six years of the new reign saw him 
absorbed in the highest themes of tragedy, and an 
unparalleled intensity and energy, which bore few 
traces of the trammels of a Court, thenceforth illu- 
mined every scene that he contrived. To 1604 the 
composition of two plays can be confidently assigned, 
one of which — ' Othello ' — ranks with Shakespeare's 
greatest achievements ; while the other — ' Measure for 
Measure' — although as a whole far inferior to 'Othello,' 
contains one of the finest scenes (between Angelo and 
Isabella, 11. ii. 43 seq.)and one of the greatest speeches 
(Claudio on the fear of death, in. i. 116-30) in the 
range of Shakespearean drama. 'Othello' was doubt- 
less the first new piece by Shakespeare that was acted 
before James. It was produced at Whitehall on 
November 1. 'Measure for Measure' followed on 
December 26. 1 Neither was printed in Shakespeare's 

1 These dates are drawn from a memorandum of plays performed at 
Court in 1604 and 1605 which is among Malone's manuscripts in the 



236 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

lifetime. The plots of both ultimately come from the 
same Italian collection of novels — Giraldi Cinthio's 
' Hecatommithi,' which was first published in 1565. 

Cinthio's painful story of ' Othello ' (decad. hi. 
nov. 3) is not known to have been translated into 
English before Shakespeare dramatised it. He fol- 
lowed its main drift with fidelity, but he introduced 
the new characters of Roderigo and Emilia, and he 
invested the catastrophe with new and fearful intensity 
by making Iago's cruel treachery known to Othello at 
the last, after Iago's perfidy has impelled the noble- 
hearted Moor in his groundless jealousy to murder 
his gentle and innocent wife Desdemona. Iago be- 
came in Shakespeare's hands the subtlest of all studies 
of intellectual villainy and hypocrisy. . The whole 
tragedy displays to magnificent advantage the dram- 
atist's fully matured powers. An unfaltering equi- 

Bodleian Library, and was obviously derived by Malone from authentic 
documents that were in his day preserved at the Audit Office in Somerset 
House. The document cannot now be traced at the Public Record 
Office, whither the Audit Office papers have been removed since 
Malone's death. Peter Cunningham professed to print the original 
document in his accounts of the revels at Court (Shakespeare Society, 
1842, pp. 203 seq.), but there is no doubt that he forged his so-called 
transcript, and that the additions which he made to Malone's memo- 
randum were the outcome of his fancy. Collier's assertion in his New 
Particulars, p. 57, that Othello was first acted at Sir Thomas Egerton's 
residence at Harerield on August 6, 1602, was based solely on a docu- 
ment among the Earl of Ellesmere's MSS. at Bridgwater House, which 
purported to be a contemporary account by the clerk, Sir Arthur Mayn- 
vvaring, of Sir Thomas Egerton's household expenses. This document, 
which Collier reprinted in his Egerton Papers (Camden Soc), p. 343, 
was authoritatively pronounced by experts in i860 to be 'a shameful 
forgery ' (cf. Ingleby's Complete View of the Shakspere Controversy, 
1861, pp. 261-5). 



THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 237 

librium is maintained in the treatment of plot and 
characters alike. 

Cinthio made the perilous story of ' Measure for 
Measure ' the subject not only of a romance, but of a 
tragedy called ' Epitia.' Before Shakespeare wrote his 
play, Cinthio's romance had been twice rendered into 
English by George Whetstone. Whetstone had not 
only given a somewhat altered version of the Italian 
romance in his unwieldy play of ' Promos and Cassan- 
dra' (in two parts of five acts each, 1578), but he had 
also freely translated it in his collection of prose 
tales, ' Heptameron of Civil Discources' (1582). Yet 
there is every likelihood that Shakespeare also knew 
Cinthio's play, which, unlike his romance, was untrans- 
lated ; the leading character, who is by Shakespeare 
christened Angelo, was known by another name to 
Cinthio in his story, but Cinthio in his play (and not in 
his novel) gives the character a sister named Angela, 
which doubtless suggested Shakespeare's designation. 1 
In the hands of Shakespeare's predecessors the tale 
is a sordid record of lust and cruelty. But Shake- 
speare prudently showed scant respect for their 
handling of the narrative. By diverting the course 
of the plot at a critical point he not merely proved 
his artistic ingenuity, but gave dramatic dignity and 
moral elevation to a degraded and repellent theme. 
In the old versions Isabella yields her virtue as 
the price of her brother's life. The central fact of 
Shakespeare's play is Isabella's inflexible and un- 
conditional chastity. Other of Shakespeare's altera- 

1 Dr. Garnett's Italian Literature, 1898, p. 227. 



238 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

tions, like the Duke's abrupt proposal to marry Isabella, 
seem hastily conceived. But his creation of the pa- 
thetic character of Mariana ' of the moated grange ' 
— the legally affianced bride of Angelo, Isabella's 
would-be seducer — skilfully excludes the possibility of 
a settlement (as in the old stories) between Isabella 
and Angelo on terms of marriage. Shakespeare's 
argument is throughout philosophically subtle. The 
poetic eloquence in which Isabella and the Duke pay 
homage to the virtue of chastity, and the many exposi- 
tions of the corruption with which unchecked sexual 
passion threatens society, alternate with coarsely comic 
interludes which suggest the vanity of seeking to efface 
natural instincts by the coercion of law. There is little 
in the play that seems designed to recommend it to 
the Court before which it was first performed. But 
the two emphatic references to a ruler's dislike of mobs, 
despite his love of his people, were perhaps penned in 
deferential allusion to James I, whose horror of crowds 
was notorious. In act 1. sc. i. 67-72 the Duke 
remarks : 

I love the people 
But do not like to stage me to their eyes. 
Though it do well, I do not relish well 
Their loud applause and aves vehement. 
Nor do I think the man of safe discretion 
That does affect it. 

Of like tenor is the succeeding speech of Angelo (act 
11. sc. iv. 27-30): 

The general {i.e. the public], subject to a well-wish'd King, . . . 
Crowd to his presence, where their untaught love 
Must needs appear offence. 



THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 239 

In 'Macbeth,' his 'great epic drama,' which he 

began in 1605 and completed next year, Shakespeare 

employed a setting wholly in harmony with 

' Macbeth.' r J . ~ ' . y 

the accession of a Scottish king. 1 he story 
was drawn from Holinshed's ' Chronicle of Scottish 
History,' with occasional reference, perhaps, to earlier 
Scottish sources. 1 The supernatural machinery of 
the three witches accorded with the King's super- 
stitious faith in demonology ; the dramatist lavished 
his sympathy on Banquo, James's ancestor ; while 
Macbeth' s vision of kings who carry ' twofold balls and 
treble sceptres ' (iv. i. 20) plainly adverted to the union 
of Scotland with England and Ireland under James's 
sway. The allusion by the porter (act 11. iii. 9) to 
the ' equivocator . . . who committed treason ' was 
perhaps suggested by the notorious defence of the 
doctrine of equivocation made by the Jesuit Henry 
Garnett, who was executed early in 1606 for his share 
in the ' Gunpowder Plot.' The piece was not printed 
until 1623. It is in its existing shape the shortest of all 
Shakespeare's plays, and it is possible that it survives 
only in an abbreviated acting version. Much scenic 
elaboration characterised the production. Dr. Simon 
Forman witnessed a performance of the tragedy at 
the Globe in April 161 1 and noted that Macbeth 
and Banquo entered the stage on horseback, and 
that Banquo's ghost was materially represented (111. 
iv. 40 seq.). Like ' Othello,' the play ranks with 
the noblest tragedies either of the modern or the 
ancient world. The characters of hero and heroine 

1 Letter by Mrs. Stopes in Athenaum, July 25, 1896. 



240 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

— Macbeth and his wife — are depicted with the 
utmost subtlety and insight. In three points ' Mac- 
beth ' differs somewhat from other of Shakespeare's 
productions in the great class of literature to which 
it belongs. The interweaving with the tragic story 
of supernatural interludes in which Fate is weirdly 
personified is not exactly matched in any other of 
Shakespeare's tragedies. In the second place, the 
action proceeds with a rapidity that is wholly without 
parallel in the rest of Shakespeare's plays. Nowhere, 
moreover, has Shakespeare introduced comic relief 
into a tragedy with bolder effect than in the porter's 
speech after the murder of Duncan (11. iii. 1 seq.). 
The theory that this passage was from another hand 
does not merit acceptance. 1 It cannot, however, be 
overlooked that the second scene of the first act — 
Duncan's interview with the 'bleeding sergeant' — 
falls so far below the style of the rest of the play as 
to suggest that it was an interpolation by a hack of 
the theatre. The resemblances between Thomas 
Middleton's later play of 'The Witch' (16 10) and 
portions of ' Macbeth ' may safely be ascribed to plagia- 
rism on Middleton's part. Of two songs which ac- 
cording to the stage directions were to be sung during 
the representation of 'Macbeth' (in. v. and iv. i.), 
only the first line of each is noted there, but songs 
beginning with the same lines are set out in full in 
Middleton's play ; they were probably by Middleton, 
and were interpolated by actors in a stage version of 
' Macbeth ' after its original production. 

1 Cf. Macbeth, ed. Clark and Wright, Clarendon Press Series. 



THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 24 1 

' King Lear,' in which Shakespeare's tragic 
genius moved without any faltering on Titanic 
•King heights, was written during 1606, and was 
Lear: produced before the Court at Whitehall on 

the night of December 26 of that year. 1 It was 
entered on the ' Stationers' Registers ' on November 
26, 1607, and two imperfect editions, published by 
Nathaniel Butter, appeared in the following year ; 
neither exactly corresponds with the other or with 
the improved and fairly satisfactory text of the Folio. 
The three versions present three different playhouse 
transcripts. Like its immediate predecessor, ' Mac- 
beth,' the tragedy was mainly founded on Holin- 
shed's ' Chronicle.' The leading theme had been 
dramatised as early as 1593, but Shakespeare's atten- 
tion was no doubt directed to it by the publication of 
a crude dramatic adaptation of Holinshed's version in 
1605 under the title of 'The True Chronicle History 
of King Leir and his three Daughters — Gonorill, 
Ragan, and Cordelia.' Shakespeare did not adhere 
closely to his original. He invested the tale of Lear 
with a hopelessly tragic conclusion, and on it he grafted 
the equally distressing tale of Gloucester and his two 
sons, which he drew from Sidney's 'Arcadia.' 2 Hints 
for the speeches of Edgar when feigning madness 
were drawn from Harsnet's ' Declaration of Popish 



1 This fact is stated on the title-page of the Quartos. 

2 Sidney tells the story in a chapter entitled 'The pitiful state and 
story of the Paphlagonian unkind King and his blind son; first related 
by the son, then by his blind father' (bk. ii. chap. 10, ed. 1590, 4to; 
pp. 132-3, ed. 1674, fol.). 

R 



242 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Impostures,' 1603. In every act of ' Lear ' the pity and 
terror of which tragedy is capable reach their climax. 
Only one who has something of the Shakespearean 
gift of language could adequately characterise the 
scenes of agony — ' the living martyrdom ' — to which 
the fiendish ingratitude of his daughters condemns 
the abdicated king — ' a very foolish, fond old man, 
fourscore and upward.' The elemental passions burst 
forth in his utterances with all the vehemence of the 
volcanic tempest which beats about his defence- 
less head in the scene on the heath. The brutal 
blinding of Gloucester by Cornwall exceeds in horror 
any other situation that Shakespeare created, if we 
assume that he was not responsible for the like scenes 
of mutilation in 'Titus Andronicus.' At no point in 
' Lear ' is there any loosening of the tragic tension. 
The faithful half-witted lad who serves the king as 
his fool plays the jesting chorus on his master's 
fortune in penetrating earnest and deepens the deso- 
lating pathos. 

Although Shakespeare's powers showed no sign 
of exhaustion, he reverted in the year following the 
colossal effort of 'Lear' (1607) to his earlier habit 
' Timon of of collaboration, and with another's aid corn- 
Athens.' posed two dramas — ' Timon of Athens ' and 
' Pericles.' An extant play on the subject of ' Timon 
of Athens' was composed in 1600 1 but there is noth- 
ing to show that Shakespeare and his coadjutor were 
acquainted with it. They doubtless derived a part 

1 It was edited for the Shakespeare Society in 1842 by Dyce, who 
owned the manuscript. 



I 



THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 243 

of their story from Painter's ' Palace of Pleasure,' 
and from a short digression in Plutarch's ' Life of 
Marc Antony,' where Antony is described as emu- 
lating the life and example of ' Timon Misanthropos 
the Athenian.' The dramatists may, too, have 
known a dialogue of Lucian entitled 'Timon,' which 
Boiardo had previously converted into a comedy 
under the name of ' II Timone.' Internal evidence 
makes it clear that Shakespeare's colleague was 
responsible for nearly the whole of acts in. and v. 
But the character of Timon himself and all the scenes 
which he dominates are from Shakespeare's pen. 
Timon is cast in the mould of Lear. 

There seems some ground for the belief that 
Shakespeare's coadjutor in 'Timon' was George 
Wilkins, a writer of ill-developed dramatic power, 
who, in 'The Miseries of Enforced Marriage' (1607), 
first treated the story that afterwards served for the 
plot of 'The Yorkshire Tragedy.' At any rate, 
Wilkins may safely be credited with por- 

' Pericles.' . . . 

tions of ' Pericles,' a romantic play which 
can be referred to the same year as ' Timon.' Shake- 
speare contributed only acts 111. and v. and parts of 
iv., which together form a self-contained whole, and 
do not combine satisfactorily with the remaining 
scenes. The presence of a third hand, of inferior 
merit to Wilkins, has been suspected, and to this col- 
laborator (perhaps William Rowley, a professional re- 
viser of plays who could show capacity on occasion) 
are best assigned the three scenes of purposeless coarse- 
ness which take place in or before a brothel (iv. ii., v., 



244 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

and vi.). From so distributed a responsibility the 
piece naturally suffers. It lacks homogeneity and 
the story is helped out by dumb shows and pro- 
logues. But a matured felicity of expression charac- 
terises Shakespeare's own contributions, narrating 
the romantic quest of Pericles for his daughter 
Marina, who was born and abandoned in a shipwreck. 
At many points he here anticipated his latest dra- 
matic effects. The shipwreck is depicted (act iv. i.) 
as impressively as in the ' Tempest,' and Marina 
and her mother Thaisa enjoy many experiences in 
common with Perdita and Hermione in the ' Winter's 
Tale.' The prologues, which were not by Shake- 
speare, were spoken by an actor representing the 
mediaeval poet John Gower, who in the fourteenth 
century had versified Pericles's story in his ' Conf essio 
Amantis' under the title of 'Apollonius of Tyre.' It 
is also found in a prose translation (from the French), 
which was printed in Lawrence Twyne's ' Patterne of 
Painfull Adventures' in 1576, and again in 1607. 
After the play was produced George Wilkins, one of 
the alleged coadjutors, based on it a novel called 
'The Painful Adventures of Pericles, Prynce of 
Tyre, being the True history of the Play of Pericles 
as it was lately presented by the worthy and ancient 
Poet, John Gower ' (1608). The play was issued as 
by William Shakespeare in a mangled form in 1608, 
and again in 161 1, 1619, 1630, and 1635. It was 
not included in Shakespeare's collected works till 
1664. 

In May 1608 Edward Blount entered in the 



THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 245 

1 Stationers' Registers,' by the authority of Sir 
•Antony George Buc, the licenser of plays, a 'booke 
and cieo- called " Anthony and Cleopatra." No copy 
of this date is known, and once again the 
company probably hindered the publication. The 
play was first printed in the folio of 1623. The source 
of the tragedy is the life of Antonius in North's 
1 Plutarch. ' Shakespeare closely followed the historical 
narrative, and assimilated not merely its temper, but, 
in the first three acts, much of its phraseology. A few 
short scenes are original, but there is no detail in such 
a passage, for example, as Enobarbus's gorgeous de- 
scription of the pageant of Cleopatra's voyage up the 
Cydnus to meet Antony (11. ii. 194 seq.), which is not 
to be matched in Plutarch. In the fourth and fifth 
acts Shakespeare's method changes and he expands 
his material with magnificent freedom. 1 The whole 
theme is in his hands instinct with a dramatic gran- 
deur which lifts into sublimity even Cleopatra's moral 
worthlessness and Antony's criminal infatuation. The 
terse and caustic comments which Antony's level- 
headed friend Enobarbus, in the role of chorus, passes 
on the action accentuates its significance. Into the 
smallest as into the greatest personages Shakespeare 
breathed all his vitalising fire. The 'happy valiancy' 
of the style, too, — to use Coleridge's admirable phrase, 
— sets the tragedy very near the zenith of Shake- 
speare's achievement, and while differentiating it 

1 Mr. George Wyndham, in his introduction to his edition of North's 
Plutarch, i. pp. xciii.-c, gives an excellent criticism of the relations of 
Shakespeare's play to Plutarch's life of Antonius. 



246 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

from ' Macbeth,' ' Othello,' and ' Lear ' renders it a 
very formidable rival. 

' Coriolanus ' (first printed from a singularly bad 
text in 1623) similarly owes its origin to the biography 
•Corio- of the hero in North's 'Plutarch,' although 
lanus.' Shakespeare may have first met the story in 
Painter's ' Palace of Pleasure ' (No. iv.). He again 
adhered to the text of Plutarch with the utmost 
literalness, and at times — even in the great crises of the 
action — repeated North's translation word for word. 1 
But the humorous scenes are wholly of Shakespeare's 
invention, and the course of the narrative was at times 
slightly changed for purposes of dramatic effect. The 
metrical characteristics prove the play to have been 
written about the same period, as ' Antony and Cleo- 

1 See the whole of Coriolanus's great speech on offering his services 
to Aufidius, the Volscian general, IV. v. 71-107: 

My name is Caius Marcius, who hath done 
To thee particularly and to all the Volsces, 
Great hurt and mischief; thereto witness may 
My surname, Coriolanus ... to do thee service. 

North's translation of Plutarch gives in almost the same terms Corio- 
lanus's speech on the occasion. It opens : ' I am Caius Martius, who 
hath done to thyself particularly, and to all the Volsces generally, 
great hurt and mischief, which I cannot deny for my surname of 
Coriolanus that I bear.' Similarly Volumnia's stirring appeal to her son 
and her son's proffer of submission, in act v. sc. iii. 94-193, reproduce 
with equal literalness North's rendering of Plutarch. ' If we held our 
peace, my son,' Volumnia begins in North, ' the state of our raiment 
would easily betray to thee what life we have led at home since thy 
exile and abode abroad; but think now with thyself,' and so on. The 
first sentence of Shakespeare's speech runs : 

Should we be silent and not speak, our raiment 

And state of bodies would bewray what life 

We have led since thy exile. Think with thyself . . . 



THE HIGHEST THEMES OF TRAGEDY 247 

patra,' probably in 1609. In its austere temper it 
contrasts at all points with its predecessor. The 
courageous self-reliance of Coriolanus's mother, Vo- 
lumnia, is severely contrasted with the submissive 
gentleness of Virgilia, Coriolanus's wife. The hero 
falls a victim to no sensual flaw, but to unchecked 
pride of caste, and there is a searching irony in the 
emphasis laid on the ignoble temper of the rabble, 
who procure his overthrow. By way of foil, the 
speeches of Menenius give dignified expression to 
the maturest political wisdom. The dramatic interest 
throughout is as single and as unflaggingly sustained 
as in 'Othello.' 



248 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



XV 

THE LATEST PLAYS 

In ' Cymbeline,' ' The Winter's Tale,' and ' The 
Tempest,' the three latest plays that came from his 
The latest unaided pen, Shakespeare dealt with roman- 
piays. t j c themes which all end happily, but he 

instilled into them a pathos which sets them in a 
category of their own apart alike from comedy and 
tragedy. The placidity of tone conspicuous in these 
three plays (none of which was published in his life- 
time) has been often contrasted with the storm and 
stress of the great tragedies that preceded them. But 
the commonly accepted theory that traces in this 
change of tone a corresponding development in the 
author's own emotions ignores the objectivity of Shake- 
speare's dramatic work. All phases of feeling lay 
within the scope of his intuition, and the successive 
order in which he approached them bore no expli- 
cable relation to substantive incident in his private 
life or experience. In middle life, his temperament, 
like that of other men, acquired a larger measure of 
gravity and his thought took a profounder cast than 
characterised it in youth. The highest topics of 
tragedy were naturally more congenial to him, and 



THE LATEST PLAYS 249 

were certain of a surer handling when he was near- 
ing his fortieth birthday than at an earlier age. The 
serenity of meditative romance was more in harmony 
with the fifth decade of his years than with the 
second or third. But no more direct or definite 
connection can be discerned between the progres- 
sive stages of his work and the progressive stages 
of his life. To seek in his biography for a chain of 
events which should be calculated to stir in his own 
soul all or any of the tempestuous passions that ani- 
mate his greatest plays is to under-estimate and to 
misapprehend the resistless might of his creative 
genius. 

In 'Cymbeline ' Shakespeare freely adapted a frag- 
ment of British history taken from Holinshed, inter- 
'Cymbe- weaving with it a story from Boccaccio's 
line.' t Decameron ' (day 2, novel ix.). Ginevra, 

whose falsely suspected chastity is the theme of the 
Italian novel, corresponds to Shakespeare's Imogen. 
Her story is also told in the tract called ' Westward 
for Smelts,' which had already been laid under con- 
tribution by Shakespeare in the ' Merry Wives.' x The 
by-plot of the banishment of the lord, Belarius, 
who in revenge for his expatriation kidnapped the 
king's young sons and brought them up with him 
in the recesses of the mountains, is Shakespeare's 
invention. Although most of the scenes are laid 
in Britain in the first century before the Chris- 
tian era, there is no pretence of historical vraisem- 
blance. With an almost ludicrous inappropriateness 

1 See p. 172 and note 2. 



250 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

the British king's courtiers make merry with technical 
terms peculiar to Calvinistic theology, like ' grace ' 
and 'election.' 1 The action, which, owing to the com- 
bination of three threads of narrative, is exceptionally 
varied and intricate, wholly belongs to the region 
of romance. On Imogen, who is the central figure 
of the play, Shakespeare lavished all the fascina- 
tion of his genius. She is the crown and flower 
of his conception of tender and artless womanhood. 
Her husband Posthumus, her rejected lover Cloten, 
her would-be seducer Iachimo, are contrasted with 
her and with each other with consummate ingenuity. 
The mountainous retreat in which Belarius and his 
fascinating boy-companions play their part has points 
of resemblance to the Forest of Arden in ' As You 
Like It ' ; but life throughout ' Cymbeline ' is grimly 
earnest, and the mountains nurture little of the con- 
templative quiet which characterises existence in the 
Forest of Arden. The play contains the splendid 
f lyric ' Fear no more the heat of the sun ' (iv. ii. 
258 seq.). The 'pitiful mummery' of the vision of 
Posthumus (v. iv. lines 30 seq.) must have been 
supplied by another hand. Dr. Forman, the astrolo- 
ger who kept notes of some of his experiences as 
a playgoer, saw 'Cymbeline ' acted either in 16 10 or 
1611. 

'A Winter's Tale' was seen by Dr. Forman at 
the Globe on May 15, 161 1, and it seems to have been 

1 In 1. i. 136-7 Imogen is described as ' past grace ' in the theologi- 
cal sense. In I. ii. 30-1 the Second Lord remarks : ' If it be a sin 
to make a true election, she is damned.' 



THE LATEST PLAYS 25 I 

acted at Court on November 5 following. 1 It is based 
'A Win- upon Greene's popular romance which was 
ter'sTaie/ ca n e d ' Pandosto ' in the first edition of 1588, 
and in numerous later editions, but was ultimately in 
1648 re-christened ' Dorastus and Fawnia.' Shake- 
speare followed Greene, his early foe, in allotting a 
seashore to Bohemia — an error over which Ben Jonson 
and many later critics have made merry. 2 A few lines 
were obviously drawn from that story of Boccaccio 
with which Shakespeare had dealt just before in 
' Cymbeline.' 3 But Shakespeare created the high- 
spirited Paulina and the thievish pedlar .Autolycus, 
whose seductive roguery has become proverbial, and 
he invented the reconciliation of Leontes, the irration- 
ally jealous husband, with Hermione, his wife, whose 
dignified resignation and forbearance lend the story 
its intense pathos. In the boy Mamilius, the poet 
depicted childhood in its most attractive guise, while 
the courtship of Florizel and Perdita is the perfection 
of gentle romance. The freshness of the pastoral 



1 See p. 255 note 1. Camillo's reflections on the ruin that attends 
those who ' struck anointed kings ' have been regarded, not quite con- 
clusively, as specially designed to gratify James I (1. ii. 358 seq.). 

2 Conversations with Drummond, p. 16. 

3 In Winter's Tale (iv. iv. 760 seq.) Autolycus threatens that 
the clown's son 'shall be flayed alive; then 'nointed over with honey, 
set on the head of a wasp's nest,' etc. In Boccaccio's story the villain 
Ambrogiuolo (Shakespeare's Iachimo), after 'being bounden to the 
stake and anointed with honey,' was 'to his exceeding torment not 
only slain but devoured of the flies and wasps and gadflies wherewith 
that country abounded' (cf. Decameron, translated by John Payne, 
1893, i. 164). 



252 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

incident surpasses that of all Shakespeare's presenta- 
tions of country life. 

' The Tempest ' was probably the latest drama that 

Shakespeare completed. In the summer of 1 609 a fleet 

bound for Virginia, under the command of 

'Tempest.' ° 

Sir George Somers, was overtaken by a 
storm off the West Indies, and the admiral's ship, the 
' Sea-Venture,' was driven on the coast of the hitherto 
unknown Bermuda Isles. There they remained ten 
months, pleasurably impressed by the mild beauty of 
the climate, but sorely tried by the hogs which over- 
ran the island and by mysterious noises which led 
them to imagine that spirits and devils had made the 
island their home. Somers and his men were given 
up for lost, but they escaped from Bermuda in two 
boats of cedar to Virginia in May 16 10, and the 
news of their adventures and of their safety was 
carried to England by some of the seamen in Sep- 
tember 16 10. The sailors' arrival created vast public 
excitement in London. At least five accounts were 
soon published of the shipwreck and of the mysterious 
island, previously uninhabited by man, which had 
proved the salvation of the expedition. 'A Discovery 
of the Bermudas, otherwise called the He of Divels,' 
written by Sylvester Jourdain or Jourdan, one of the 
survivors, appeared as early as October. A second 
pamphlet describing the disaster was issued by the 
Council of the Virginia Company in December, and 
a third by one of the leaders of the expedition, Sir 
Thomas Gates. Shakespeare, who mentions the 
'still vexed Bermoothes ' (1. i. 229), incorporated 



THE LATEST PLAYS 253 

in ' The Tempest ' many hints from Jourdain, Gates, 
and the other pamphleteers. The references to the 
gentle climate of the island on which Prospero is 
cast away, and to the spirits and devils that infested 
it, seem to render its identification with the newly 
discovered Bermudas unquestionable. But Shake- 
speare incorporated the result of study of other 
books of travel. The name of the god Setebos 
whom Caliban worships is drawn from Eden's trans- 
lation of Magellan's 'Voyage to the South Pole' 
(in the ' Historie of Travel!,' 1577), where the giants 
of Patagonia are described as worshipping a 'great 
devil they call Setebos.' No source for the complete 
plot has been discovered, but the German writer, 
Jacob Ayrer, who died in 1605, dramatised a some- 
what similar story in ' Die schone Sidea,' where 
the adventures of Prospero, Ferdinand, Ariel, and 
Miranda are roughly anticipated. 1 English actors 
were performing at Nuremberg, where Ayrer lived, 
in 1604 and 1606, and may have brought reports 
of the piece to Shakespeare. Or perhaps both 
English and German plays had a common origin in 
some novel that has not yet been traced. Gonzalo's 
description of an ideal commonwealth (11. i. 147 seq.) 
is derived from Florio's translation of Montaigne's 
essays (1603), while into Prospero's great speech 
renouncing his practice of magical art (v. i. 33-57) 
Shakespeare wrought reminiscences of Golding's trans- 
lation of Medea's invocation in Ovid's ' Metamorphoses ' 

1 Printed in Cohn's Shakespeare in Germany. 



254 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

(vii. 197-206). 1 Golding's rendering of Ovid had been 
one of Shakespeare's best-loved books in youth. 

A highly ingenious theory, first suggested by Tieck, 
represents ' The Tempest ' (which, excepting ' Mac- 
beth ' and the 'Two Gentlemen,' is the shortest of 
Shakespeare's plays) as a masque written to celebrate 
the marriage of Princess Elizabeth (like Miranda, 
an island-princess) with the Elector Frederick. This 
marriage took place on February 14, 161 2-1 3, and 
' The Tempest ' formed one of a series of nineteen 
plays which were performed at the nuptial festivities 
in May 161 3. But none of the other plays produced 
seem to have been new ; they were all apparently 
chosen because they were established favourites at 
Court and on the public stage, and neither in subject- 
matter or language bore obviously specific relation to 
the joyous occasion. But 161 3 is, in fact, on more 
substantial ground far too late a date to which to assign 
the composition of 'The Tempest' According to in- 
formation which was accessible to M alone, the play 
had 'a being and a name' in the autumn of 161 1, 
and was no doubt written some months before. 2 

1 Golding's translation of Ovid's Meta?norphoses, edit. 1 612, p. 82^. 
The passage begins : 

Ye ayres and windes, ye elves of hills, ye brookes and woods alone. 

2 Variorum Shakespeare, 1 82 1, xv. 423. In the early weeks of 1 61 1 
Shakespeare's company presented no less than fifteen plays at Court. 
Payment of 150/. was made to the actors for their services on February 
12, 1610-11. The council's warrant is extant in the Bodleian Library 
MS. Rawl. A 204 (f. 305). The plays performed were not specified by 
name, but some by Shakespeare were beyond doubt amongst them, and 
possibly ' The Tempest.' A forged page which was inserted in a detached 



THE LATEST PLAYS 255 

The plot, which revolves about the forcible expulsion 
of a ruler from his dominions, and his daughter's 
wooing by the son of the usurper's chief ally, is, 
moreover, hardly one that a shrewd playwright would 
deliberately choose as the setting of an official epitha- 
lamium in honour of the daughter of a monarch so 
sensitive about his title to the crown as James I. 1 

In the theatre and at court the early representa- 
tions of ' The Tempest ' evoked unmeasured applause. 
The success owed something to the beautiful lyrics 
which were dispersed through the play and had been 
set to music by Robert Johnson, a lutenist in high 
repute. 2 

Like its predecessor, 'A Winter's Tale,' 'The 
Tempest ' long maintained its first popularity in the 

account-book of the Master of the Court-Revels for the years 161 1 
and 1 61 2 at the Public Record Office, and was printed as genuine 
in Peter Cunningham's Extracts from the Revels' Accounts, p. 210, 
supplies among other entries two to the effect that ' The Tempest ' was 
performed at Whitehall at Hallowmas (i.e. November 1) 161 1, 
and that ' A Winter's Tale ' followed four days later, on November 5. 
Though these entries are fictitious, the information they offer may be 
true. Malone doubtless based his positive statement respecting the 
date of the composition of ' The Tempest 'in 161 1 on memoranda made 
from papers then accessible at the Audit Office, but now, since the 
removal of those archives to the Public Record Office, mislaid. All 
the forgeries introduced into the Revels' accounts are well considered 
and show expert knowledge (see p. 235, note 1). The forger of the 
1 61 2 entries probably worked either on the published statement of 
Malone, or on fuller memoranda left by him among his voluminous 
manuscripts. 

1 Cf. Universal Review, April 1889, article by Dr. Richard Garnett. 

2 Harmonised scores of Johnson's airs for the songs ' Full Fathom 
Five ' and ' Where the Bee Sucks ' are preserved in Wilson's ' Cheerful 
Ayres and Ballads set for Three Voices,' 1660, 



256 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

theatre, and the vogue of the two pieces drew a pass- 
ing sneer from Ben Jonson. In the Induction to his 
' Bartholomew Fair,' first acted in 16 14, he wrote : 
' If there be never a servant-monster in the Fair, who 
can help it he [i.e. the author] says? nor a nest of 
Antics. He is loth to make nature afraid in his 
plays like those that beget Tales, Tempests, and such 
like Drolleries.' The ' servant-monster ' was an ob- 
vious allusion to Caliban, and ' the nest of Antics ' 
was a glance at the satyrs who figure in the sheep- 
shearing feast in 'A Winter's Tale.' 

Nowhere did Shakespeare give rein to his 
imagination with more imposing effect than in ' The 
Fanciful Tempest.' As in ' Midsummer Night's 

interpreta- x ° 

tions of Dream,' magical or supernatural agencies 
pest: are the mainsprings of the plot. But the 

tone is marked at all points by a solemnity and pro- 
fundity of thought and sentiment which are lacking 
in the early comedy. The serious atmosphere has 
led critics, without much reason, to detect in the 
scheme of ' The Tempest ' something more than 
the irresponsible play of poetic fancy. Many of the 
characters have been represented as the outcome of 
speculation respecting the least soluble problems of 
human existence. Little reliance should be placed 
on such interpretations. The creation of Miranda 
is the apotheosis in literature of tender, ingenuous 
girlhood unsophisticated by social intercourse, but 
Shakespeare had already sketched the outlines of 
the portrait in 'Marina' and ' Perdita,' the youthful 
heroines respectively of ' Pericles ' and ' A Winter's 



THE LATEST PLAYS 257 

Tale,' and these two characters were directly devel- 
oped from romantic stories of girl-princesses, cast by 
misfortune on the mercies of nature, to which Shake- 
speare had recourse for the plots of the two plays. 
It is by accident, and not by design, that in Ariel 
appear to be discernible the capabilities of human 
intellect when detached from physical attributes. 
Ariel belongs to the same world as Puck, although 
he is delineated in the severer colours that were 
habitual to Shakespeare's fully developed art. Cali- 
ban — Ariel's antithesis — did not owe his existence 
to any conscious endeavour on Shakespeare's part to 
typify human nature before the evolution of moral 
sentiment. 1 Caliban is an imaginary portrait, con- 
ceived with matchless vigour and vividness of the 
aboriginal savage of the New World, descriptions of 
whom abounded in contemporary travellers' speech 
and writings, and universally excited the liveliest 
curiosity. 2 In Prospero, the guiding providence of the 
romance, who resigns his magic power in the closing 
scene, traces have been sought of the lineaments of 
the dramatist himself, who in this play probably bade 
farewell to the enchanted work of his life. Prospero 
is in the story a scholar-prince of rare intellectual 
attainments, whose engrossing study of the mysteries 

1 Cf. Browning, Caliban tipon Setebos ; Daniel Wilson, Caliban, 
or the Missing Link (1873) ; and Renan, Caliban (1878), a drama con- 
tinuing Shakespeare's play. 

2 When Shakespeare wrote Troilus and Cressida he had formed 
some conception of a character of the Caliban type. Thersites says of 
Ajax (111. iii. 264), 'He's grown a very land-fish, languageless, a 
monster.' 



258 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of science has given him command of the forces of 
nature. His magnanimous renunciation of his magical 
faculty as soon as by its exercise he has restored his 
shattered fortunes is in perfect accord with the general 
conception of his just and philosophical temper. Any 
other justification of his final act is superfluous. 

While there is every indication that in 161 1 Shake- 
speare abandoned dramatic composition, there seems 
Unfinished little doubt that he left with the manager of 
plays. h} s company unfinished drafts of more than 

one play which others were summoned at a later date 
to complete. His place at the head of the active 
dramatists was at once filled by John Fletcher, 
and Fletcher, with some aid possibly from his 
friend Philip Massinger, undertook the working 
up of Shakespeare's unfinished sketches. On Sep- 
tember 9, 1653, the publisher Humphrey Moseley 
obtained a license for the publication of a play which 
he described as ' History of Cardenio, by Fletcher 
and Shakespeare.' This was probably identical with 
The lost t ^ ie ^ ost pl a y> ' Cardenno,' or 'Cardenna,' 
play of which was twice acted at Court by Shake- 
ar emo. S p eare 's company in 161 3 — in May during 
the Princess Elizabeth's marriage festivities, and on 
June 8 before the duke of Savoy's ambassador. 1 
Moseley, whose description may have been fraudulent, 2 

1 Treasurer's accounts in Rawl. MS., A 239, leaf 47 (in the 
Bodleian), printed in New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1895-6, 
part ii. p. 419. 

2 The Merry Devill of Edmonton, a comedy which was first 
published in 1 608, was also re-entered by Moseley for publication on 
September 9, 1653, as the work of Shakespeare (see p. 181, supra). 



THE LATEST PLAYS 259 

failed to publish the piece, and nothing is otherwise 
known of it with certainty ; but it was no doubt a 
dramatic version of the adventures of the lovelorn 
Cardenio which are related in the first part of ' Don 
Quixote ' (ch. xxiii.-xxxvii.). Cervantes's amorous 
story, which first appeared in English in Thomas 
Shelton's translation in 1612, offers much incident in 
Fletcher's vein. When Lewis Theobald, the Shake- 
spearean critic, brought out his ' Double Falshood, 
or the Distrest Lovers,' in 1727, he mysteriously 
represented that the play was based on an unfinished 
and unpublished draft of a play by Shakespeare. 
The story of Theobald's piece is the story of Car- 
denio, although the characters are renamed. There 
is nothing in the play as published by Theobald 
to suggest Shakespeare's hand, 1 but Theobald doubt- 
less took advantage of a tradition that Shakespeare 
and Fletcher had combined to dramatise the Cer- 
vantic theme. 

Two other pieces, ' The Two Noble Kinsmen ' and 
* Henry VIII,' which are attributed to a similar partner- 
ship, survive. 2 ' The Two Noble Kinsmen ' was first 
, Two printed in 1634, and was written, accord- 

Noble ing to the title-page, 'by the memorable 

Kinsmen.' worthies of their time> Mr j ohn Fl etc her 

1 Dyce thought he detected traces of Shirley's workmanship, but it 
was possibly Theobald's unaided invention. 

2 The 1634 quarto of the play was carefully edited for the New 
Shakspere Society by Mr. Harold Littledale in 1876. See also 
Spalding, Shakespeare's Authorship of 'Two Noble Kinsmen,'' 1833, 
reprinted by New Shakspere Society, 1876; Spalding in Edinburgh 
Review, 1847; Transactions, New Shakspere Society, 1874. 



260 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

and Mr William Shakespeare, gentlemen.' It was 
included in the folio of Beaumont and Fletcher of 
1679. On grounds alike of aesthetic criticism and 
metrical tests, a substantial portion of the play was 
assigned to Shakespeare by Charles Lamb, Coleridge, 
and Dyce. The last included it in his edition of Shake- 
speare. Coleridge detected Shakespeare's hand in act 
1., act 11. sc. L, and act in. sc. i. and ii. In addition to 
those scenes, act iv. sc. iii. and act v. (except sc. ii.) 
were subsequently placed to his credit. Some recent 
critics assign much of the alleged Shakespearean work 
to Massinger, and they narrow Shakespeare's contri- 
bution to the first scene (with the opening song, 'Roses 
their sharp spines being gone') and act v. sc. i. and 
iv. 1 An exact partition is impossible, but frequent 
signs of Shakespeare's workmanship are unmistak- 
able. All the passages for which Shakespeare 
can on any showing be held responsible develop the 
main plot, which is drawn from Chaucer's ' Knight's 
Tale ' of Palamon and Arcite, and seems to have 
been twice dramatised previously. A lost play, 
' Palaemon and Arcyte,' by Richard Edwardes, was 
acted at Court in 1566, and a second piece, called 
1 Palamon and Arsett ' (also lost), was purchased by 
Henslowe in 1594. The non-Shakespearean residue 
of ' The Two Noble Kinsmen ' is disfigured by 
indecency and triviality, and is of no literary 
value. 

A like problem is presented by ' Henry VIII.' 

1 Cf. Mr. Robert Bo.yle in Transactions of the New Shakspere 
Society, 1882. 



THE LATEST PLAYS 26 1 

The play was nearly associated with the final scene 
in the history of that theatre which was identified 
with the triumphs of Shakespeare's career. ' Henry 
VIII ' was in course of performance at the Globe 
Theatre on June 29, 16 13, when the firing of some 
cannon incidental to the performance set fire to the 
playhouse, which was burned down. The theatre 
•Henry was rebuilt next year, but the new fabric 
VIIL ' never acquired the fame of the old. Sir 

Henry Wotton, describing the disaster on July 2, 
entitled the piece that was in process of representa- 
tion at the time as ' All is True representing some 
principal pieces in the Reign of Henry VIII.' 1 The 

1 ReliquicE Wottoniance, 1675, pp. 425-6. Wotton adds 'that the 
piece was set forth with many extraordinary circumstances of Pomp and 
Majesty, even to the matting of the Stage; the Knights of the Order, 
with their Georges and Garters, the Guards with their embroidered Coats, 
and the like : sufficient in truth within a while to make greatness very 
familiar, if not ridiculous. Now King Henry making a Masque at the 
Cardinal Wolsey's House, and certain Canons being shot off at his entry, 
some of the paper or other stuff wherewith one of them was stopped, did 
light on the Thatch, where being thought at first but an idle smoak, and 
their eyes more attentive to the show, it kindled inwardly, and ran 
round like a train, consuming within less than an hour the whole House 
to the very grounds. This was the fatal period of that vertuous fabrique; 
wherein yet nothing did perish, but wood and straw and a few forsaken 
cloaks; only one man had his breeches set on fire, that would perhaps 
have broyled him, if he had not by the benefit of a provident wit put it out 
with bottle[d] ale.' John Chamberlain writing to Sir Ralph Winwood 
on July 8, 1613, briefly mentions that the theatre was burnt to the 
ground in less than two hours, owing to the accidental ignition of the 
thatch roof through the firing of cannon ' to be used in the play.' The 
audience escaped unhurt though they had ' but two narrow doors to get 
out' (Winwood's Memorials, iii. p. 469). A similar account was sent 
by the Rev. Thomas Lorkin to Sir Thomas Puckering, Bart., from Lon- 
ii »r, T_; ie 30, 1613. 'The fire broke out,' Lorkin writes, 'no longer 



262 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

play of 'Henry VIII' that is commonly allotted to 
Shakespeare is loosely constructed, and the last act ill 
coheres with its predecessors. The whole resembles an 
' historical masque.' It was first printed in the folio of 
Shakespeare's works in 1623, but shows traces of more 
hands than one. The three chief characters — the king, 
Queen Katharine of Arragon, and Cardinal Wolsey 
— bear clear marks of Shakespeare's best workman- 
ship ; but only act 1. sc. i., act 11. sc. iii. and iv. 
(Katharine's trial), act in. sc. ii. (except 11. 204-460), 
act v. sc. i., can on either aesthetic or metrical grounds 
be confidently assigned to him. These portions may, 
according to their metrical characteristics, be dated, 
like the * Winter's Tale,' about 161 1. There are good 
grounds for assigning nearly all the remaining thirteen 
scenes to the pen of Fletcher, with occasional aid from 
Massinger. Wolsey's familiar farewell to Cromwell 
(act in. sc. ii. 11. 204-460) is the only passage the 
authorship of which excites really grave embarrass- 
ment. It recalls at every point the style of Fletcher, 
and nowhere that of Shakespeare. But the Fletcherian 
style, as it is here displayed, is invested with a great- 
ness that is not matched elsewhere in Fletcher's work. 
That Fletcher should have exhibited such faculty once 

since than yesterday, while Burbage's company were acting at the Globe 
the play of Henry VHP (Court and Times of James I, 1848, vol. i. 
p. 253). A contemporary sonnet on ' the pittifull burning of the Globe 
playhouse in London,' first printed by Haslewood ' from an old manu- 
script volume of poems' in the Gentleman 's Magazine for 1816, was 
again printed by Halliwell-Phillipps (i. pp. 310-11) from an authentic 
manuscript in the library of Sir Matthew Wilson, Bart., of Eshton Hall, 
Yorkshire. 



THE LATEST PLAYS 263 

and once only is barely credible, and we are driven to 
the alternative conclusion that the noble valediction was 
by Shakespeare, who in it gave proof of his versatility 
by echoing in a glorified key the habitual strain of 
Fletcher, his colleague and virtual successor. James 
Spedding's theory that Fletcher hastily completed 
Shakespeare's unfinished draft for the special purpose 
of enabling the company to celebrate the marriage of 
Princess Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, which 
took place on February 14, 16 12-13, seems fanciful. 
During May 161 3, according to an extant list, nineteen 
plays were produced at Court in honour of the event, 
but 'Henry VIII' is not among them. 1 The con- 
jecture that Massinger and Fletcher alone collaborated 
in 'Henry VIII' (to the exclusion of Shakespeare 
altogether) does not deserve serious consideration. 2 

1 Bodl. MS. Rawl. A 239; cf. Spedding in Gentleman 's Maga- 
zine, 1850, reprinted in New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 1874. 

2 Cf. Mr. Robert Boyle in New Shakspere Society's Transactions, 
1884. 



264 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



XVI 

THE CLOSE OF LIFE 

The concluding years of Shakespeare's life (161 1- 
16) were mainly passed at Stratford. It is probable 
that in 161 1 he disposed of his shares in the Globe and 
Blackfriars theatres. He owned none at the date of 
his death. But until 1614 he paid frequent visits to 
London, where friends in sympathy with his work 
were alone to be found. His plays continued to form 
the staple of Court performances. In May 161 3, 
pia s at during the Princess Elizabeth's marriage 
Court in festivities, Heming, Shakespeare's former 
colleague, produced at Whitehall no less 
than seven of his plays, viz. ' Much Ado,' 'Tempest,' 
'Winter's Tale,' 'Sir John Falstaff ' (i.e. 'Merry 
Wives'), 'Othello,' 'Julius Caesar,' and 'Hotspur' 
(doubtless ' 1 Henry IV ')?■ Of his actor-friends, one 
Actor- of the chief, Augustine Phillips, had died in 
friends. 1605, leaving by will ' to my fellowe, William 
Shakespeare, a thirty-shillings piece of gold.' With 
Burbage, Heming, and Condell his relations remained 
close to the end. Burbage, according to a poetic 
elegy, made his reputation by creating the leading 
parts in Shakespeare's greatest tragedies. Hamlet, 

1 Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 87. 



THE CLOSE OF LIFE 265 

Othello, and Lear were roles in which he gained 
especial renown. But Burbage and Shakespeare 
were popularly credited with co-operation in less 
solemn enterprises. They were reputed to be 
companions in many sportive adventures. The sole 
anecdote of Shakespeare that is positively known 
to have been recorded in his lifetime relates that 
Burbage, when playing Richard III, agreed with 
a lady in the audience to visit her after the perform- 
ance ; Shakespeare, overhearing the conversation, 
anticipated the actor's visit, and met Burbage on his 
arrival with the quip that 'William the Conqueror 
was before Richard the Third.' 1 

Such gossip possibly deserves little more accept- 
ance than the later story, in the same key, which 
credits Shakespeare with the paternity of Sir William 
D'Avenant. The latter was baptised at Oxford on 
March 3, 1605, as the son of John D'Avenant, the 
landlord of the Crown Inn, where Shakespeare lodged 
in his journeys to and from Stratford. The story 
of. Shakespeare's parental relation to D'Avenant 
was long current in Oxford, and was at times com- 
placently accepted by the reputed son. Shakespeare 
is known to have been a welcome guest at John 
D'Avenant's house, and another son, Robert, boasted 
of the kindly notice which the poet took of him 
as a child. 2 It is safer to adopt the less compro- 
mising version which makes Shakespeare the god- 

1 Manningham, Diary, March 13, 1601, Camd. Soc. p. 39. 

2 Cf. Aubrey, Lives; Halliwell-Phillipps, ii. 43; and art. Sir 
William D'Avenant, in the Dictionary of National Biography. 



266 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

father of the boy William instead of his father. But 
the antiquity and persistence of the scandal belie the 
assumption that Shakespeare was known to his con- 
temporaries as a man of scrupulous virtue. Ben 
Jonson and Drayton — the latter a Warwickshire man 
— seem to have been Shakespeare's closest literary 
friends in his latest years. 

At Stratford, in the words of Nicholas Rowe, ' the 
latter part of Shakespeare's life was spent, as all men 
Finaisettie- °^ g°°d sense will wish theirs may be, in 
ment at ease, retirement, and the conversation of his 
friends.' As a resident in the town, he took 
a full share of social and civic responsibilities. On 
October 16, 1608, he stood chief godfather to Will- 
iam, son of Henry Walker, a mercer and alderman. 
On September 11, 161 1, when he had finally settled 
in New Place, his name appeared in the margin of a 
folio page of donors (including all the principal in- 
habitants of Stratford) to a fund that was raised 
' towards the charge of prosecuting the bill in Parlia- 
ment for the better repair of the highways.' 

Meanwhile his own domestic affairs engaged some 
of his attention. Of his two surviving children — 
both daughters — the eldest, Susannah, had married, 
on June 5, 1607, John Hall ( 1 575-1635), a rising physi- 
cian of puritan leanings, and in the following Feb- 
ruary there was born the poet's only granddaughter, 
Elizabeth Hall. On September 9, 1608, the poet's 
Domestic mother was buried in the parish church, and 
affairs. on February 4, 161 3, his third brother 
Richard. On July 15, 161 3, Mrs. Hall preferred, 



j Hit 


v.. 







SHAKESPEARE'S AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURE APPENDED TO 
THE PURCHASE-DEED OF A HOUSE IN BLACKFRIARS 
ON MARCH 10, 1612-13. 

Reproduced from the original document now preserved in the Guildhall 
Library, London. 



THE CLOSE OF LIFE 267 

with her father's assistance, a charge of slander 
against one Lane in the ecclesiasical court at Worces- 
ter ; the defendant, who had apparently charged the 
lady with illicit relations with one Ralph Smith, did 
not appear, and was excommunicated. 

In the same year (161 3), when on a short visit to 
London, he invested a small sum of money in a new 
Purchase property. This was his last investment in 
in Biack- Se rea * estate - He then purchased a house, the 
friars. ground-floor of which was a haberdasher's 

shop, with a yard attached. It was situated within 
six hundred feet of the Blackf riars Theatre — on the 
west side of St. Andrew's Hill, formerly termed Pud- 
dle Hill or Puddle Dock Hill, in the near neighbour- 
hood of what is now known as Ireland Yard. The 
former owner, Henry Walker, a musician, had bought 
the property for 100/. in 1604. Shakespeare in 161 3 
agreed to pay him 140/. The deeds of conveyance 
bear the date of March 10 in that year. 1 Next day, 
on March 11, Shakespeare executed another deed 
(now in the British Museum) which stipulated that 
60/. of the purchase-money was to remain on mort- 
gage until the following Michaelmas. The money 
was unpaid at Shakespeare's death. In both pur- 
chase-deed and mortgage-deed Shakespeare's signa- 
ture was witnessed by, among others, Henry Law- 
rence, ' servant ' or clerk to Robert Andrewes, the 

1 The indenture prepared for the purchaser is in the Halliwell- 
Phillipps collection, which was sold to Mr. Marsden J. Perry of Provi- 
dence, Rhode Island, U. S. A., in January 1897. That held by the 
vendor is in the Guildhall Library. 



268 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

scrivener who drew the deeds, and Lawrence's seal, 
bearing his initials ' H. L.,' was stamped in each case 
on the parchment tag across the head of which 
Shakespeare wrote his name. In all three docu- 
ments — the two indentures and the mortgage-deed 
— Shakespeare is described as ' of Stratf ord-on-Avon, 
in the Countie of Warwick, Gentleman.' There is 
no reason to suppose that he acquired the house for 
his own residence. He at once leased the property 
to John Robinson, already a resident in the neigh- 
bourhood. 

With puritans and puritanism Shakespeare was 
not in sympathy, 1 and he could hardly have viewed 
with unvarying composure the steady progress that 
puritanism was making among his fellow-townsmen. 
Nevertheless a preacher, doubtless of puritan pro- 
clivities, was entertained at Shakespeare's residence, 
New Place, after delivering a sermon in the spring of 
1614. The incident might serve to illustrate Shake- 
speare's characteristic placability, but his son-in-law 

1 Shakespeare's references to puritans in the plays of his middle 
and late life are so uniformly discourteous that they must be judged to 
reflect his personal feeling. The discussion between Maria and Sir 
Andrew Aguecheek regarding Malvolio's character in Twelfth Night 
(11. iii. 153 seq.) runs: 

Maria. Marry, sir, sometimes he is a kind of puritan. 

Sir Andrew. O! if I thought that, I'd beat him like a dog. 

Sir Toby. What, for being a puritan ? thy exquisite reason, dear knight. 

Sir Andrew. I have no exquisite reason for 't, but I have reason good enough. 

In Winter's Tale (iv. iii. 46) the Clown, after making contemptuous 
references to the character of the shearers, remarks that there is ' but one 
puritan amongst them, and he sings psalms to hornpipes.' Cf. the 
allusion's to ' grace ' and ' election ' in Cymbeline, p. 250, note I. 






*i*C4-i> *1 . I < 




SHAKESPEARE'S AUTOGRAPH SIGNATURE APPENDED TO 
A DEED MORTGAGING HIS HOUSE IN BLACKFRIARS 
ON MARCH ii, 1612-13. 

Reproduced from the original document now preserved in the British 
Museum. 



THE CLOSE OF LIFE 269 

Hall, who avowed sympathy with puritanism, was prob- 
ably in the main responsible for the civility. 1 In July 
John Combe, a rich inhabitant of Stratford, died and 
left 5/. to Shakespeare. The legend that Shakespeare 
alienated him by composing some doggerel on his 
practice of lending money at ten or twelve per cent, 
seems apocryphal, although it is quoted by Aubrey and 
accepted by Rowe. 2 Combe's death involved Shake- 
speare more conspicuously than before in civic affairs. 
Combe's heir William no sooner succeeded to his 
father's lands than he, with a neighbouring owner, 

1 The town council of Stratford-on-Avon, whose meeting-chamber 
almost overlooked Shakespeare's residence of New Place, gave curious 
proof of their puritanic suspicion of the drama on February 7, 161 2, 
when they passed a resolution that plays were unlawful and ' the suffer- 
ance of them against the orders heretofore made and against the 
example of other well-governed cities and boroughs,' and the council 
was therefore ' content,' the resolution ran, that ' the penalty of xs. 
imposed [on players heretofore] be xli. henceforward.' Ten years later 
the King's players were bribed by the council to leave the city without 
playing (see the present writer's Stratford-on-Avon, p. 270). 

2 The lines as quoted by Aubrey {Lives, ed. Clark, ii. 226) run : 

Ten-in-the-hundred the Devil allows, 

But Combe will have twelve he sweares and he vowes; 

If any man ask, who lies in this tomb? 

Oh! ho! quoth the Devil, 'tis my John-a-Combe. 

Rowe's version opens somewhat differently : 

Ten-in-the-hundred lies here ingrav'd. 
'Tis a hundred to ten, his soul is not sav'd. 

The lines, in one form or another, seem to have been widely familiar in 
Shakespeare's lifetime, but were not ascribed to him. The first two in 
Rowe's version were printed in the epigrams by H[enry] P[arrot], 1608, 
and again in Camden's Remains, 1614. The whole first appeared in 
Richard Brathwaite's Remains in 1618 under the heading: 'Upon one 
John Combe of Stratford upon Aven, a notable Usurer, fastened upon 
a Tombe that he had Caused to be built in his Life Time. 



270 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Arthur Mannering, steward of Lord-Chancellor Elles- 
mere (who was ex-officio lord of the manor), attempted 
Attempt to to enclose the common fields, which belonged 
enclose the to tne Corporation of Stratford, about his 

Stratford *" , 

common estate at Welcombe. The Corporation re- 
fieids. solved to offer the scheme a stout resistance. 

Shakespeare had a twofold interest in the matter by 
virtue of his owning the freehold of 106 acres at Wel- 
combe and Old Stratford, and as joint owner — now 
with Thomas Greene, the town clerk — of the tithes of 
Old Stratford, Welcombe, and Bishopton. His inter- 
est in his freeholds could not have been prejudicially 
affected, but his interest in the tithes might be depreci- 
ated by the proposed enclosure. Shakespeare conse- 
quently joined with his fellow-owner Greene in obtain- 
ing from Combe's agent Replingham in October 1614 
a deed indemnifying both against any injury they 
might suffer from the enclosure. But having thus 
secured himself against all possible loss, Shakespeare 
threw his influence into Combe's scale. In November 
1614 he was on a last visit to London, and Greene, 
whose official position as town clerk compelled him 
to support the Corporation in defiance of his private 
interests, visited him there to discuss the position of 
affairs. On December 23, 1614, the Corporation in 
formal meeting drew up a letter to Shakespeare im- 
ploring him to aid them. Greene himself sent to the 
dramatist ' a note of inconveniences [to the Corpora- 
tion that] would happen by the enclosure.' But 
although an ambiguous entry of a later date (Sep- 
tember 161 5) in the few extant pages of Greene's 



THE CLOSE OF LIFE 2*]\ 

ungrammatical diary has been unjustifiably tortured 
into an expression of disgust on Shakespeare's part 
at Combe's conduct, 1 it is plain that, in the spirit of 
his agreement with Combe's agent, he continued to 
lend Combe his countenance. Happily Combe's 
efforts failed, and the common lands remain un- 
enclosed. 

At the beginning of 1616 Shakespeare's health 
was failing. He directed Francis Collins, a solicitor of 
Warwick, to draft his will, but, though it was prepared 
for signature on January 25, it was for the time laid 
aside. On February 10, 1616, Shakespeare's younger 
daughter, Judith, married, at Stratford parish church, 
Thomas Quiney, four years her junior, a son of an old 
friend of the poet. The ceremony took place appar- 
ently without public asking of the banns and before 
a license was procured. The irregularity led to 
the summons of the bride and bridegroom to the 
ecclesiastical court at Worcester and the imposition 
of a fine. According to the testimony of John Ward, 

1 The clumsy entry runs : ' Sept. Mr. Shakespeare tellyng J. 
Greene that I was not able to beare the encloseing of Welcombe.' 
J. Greene is to be distinguished from Thomas Greene, the writer of the 
diary. The entry therefore implies that Shakespeare told J. Greene 
that the writer of the diary, Thomas Greene, was not able to bear the 
enclosure. Those who represent Shakespeare as a champion of popular 
rights have to read the ' I ' in 'I was not able ' as ' he.' Were that 
the correct reading, Shakespeare would be rightly credited with telling 
J. Greene that he disliked the enclosure; but palaeographers only 
recognise the reading ' I.' Cf. Shakespeare and the Enclosure of 
Common Fields at Welco??ibe, a facsimile of Greene's diary, now at 
the Birthplace, Stratford, with a transcript by Mr. E. J. L. Scott, edited 
by Dr. C. M. Ingleby, 1885. 



272 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

the vicar, Shakespeare entertained at New Place his 
two friends, Michael Drayton and Ben Jonson, in this 
same spring of 1616, and ' had a merry meet- 
ing,' but 'itt seems drank too hard, for 
Shakespeare died of a feavour there contracted.' A 
popular local legend, which was not recorded till 
1762, 1 credited Shakespeare with engaging at an 
earlier date in a prolonged and violent drinking bout 
at Bidford, a neighbouring village, 2 but his achieve- 
ments as a hard drinker may be dismissed as 
unproven. The cause of his death is undetermined, 
but probably his illness seemed likely to take a fatal 
turn in March, when he revised and signed the will 
that had been drafted in the previous January. On 
Tuesday, April 23, he died at the age of fifty-two. 3 
On Thursday, April 25 (O.S.) the poet was 
buried inside Stratford Church, near the 
northern wall of the chancel, in which, as part-owner 
of the tithes, and consequently one of the lay-rectors, 
he had a right of interment. Hard by was the charnel- 
house, where bones dug up from the churchyard were 
deposited. Over the poet's grave were inscribed the 
lines : 

Good friend, for Jesus' sake forbeare 
To dig the dust enclosed heare; 
Bleste be the man that spares these stones, 
And curst be he that moves my bones. 

1 British Magazine, June 1762. 

2 Cf. Malone, Shakespeare, 1821, ii. 500-2; Ireland, Confessions, 
1805, p. 34; Green, Legend of the Crab Tree, 1857. 

3 The date is in the old style, and is equivalent to May 3 in the 
new; Cervantes, whose death is often described as simultaneous, died 
at Madrid ten days earlier — on April 13, in the old style, or April 23, 
1 61 6, in the new. 



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THE CLOSE OF LIFE 273 

According to one William Hall, who described a 
visit to Stratford in 1694, 1 these verses were penned 
by Shakespeare to suit 'the capacity of clerks and 
sextons, for the most part a very ignorant set of 
people.' Had this curse not threatened them, Hall 
proceeds, the sexton would not have hesitated in 
course of time to remove Shakespeare's dust to 'the 
bone-house.' As it was, the grave was made seven- 
teen feet deep, and was never opened, even to receive 
his wife, although she expressed a desire to be buried 
with her husband. 

Shakespeare's will, the first draft of which was 

drawn up before January 25, 161 6, received many 

interlineations and erasures before it was 

The will. .... . , _ . „ 

signed in the ensuing March. Francis 
Collins, the solicitor of Warwick, and Thomas Russell, 
' esquier,' of Stratford, were the overseers ; it was 
proved by John Hall, the poet's son-in-law and joint- 
executor with Mrs. Hall, in London on June 22 
following. The religious exordium is in conventional 
phraseology, and gives no clue to Shakespeare's 
personal religious opinions. What those opinions 
were, we have neither the means nor the warrant for 
discussing. But while it is possible to quote from the 
plays many contemptuous references to the puritans 
and their doctrines, we may dismiss as idle gossip 
Davies's irresponsible report that 'he dyed a papist.' 
The name of Shakespeare's wife was omitted from 
the original draft of the will, but by an interlineation 

1 Hall's letter was published as a quarto pamphlet at London in 
1884, from the original, now in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. 
T 



274 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

in the final draft she received his second best bed 
with its furniture. No other bequest was made her. 
Bequest to Several wills of the period have been dis- 
his wife. covered in which a bedstead or other article 
of household furniture formed part of a wife's inheri- 
tance, but none except Shakespeare's is forthcoming 
in which a bed forms the sole bequest. At the same 
time the precision with which Shakespeare's will ac- 
counts for and assigns to other legatees every known 
item of his property refutes the conjecture that he 
had set aside any portion of it under a previous 
settlement or jointure with a view to making inde- 
pendent provision for his wife. Her right to a widow's 
dower — i.e. to a third share for life in freehold estate 
— was not subject to testamentary disposition, but 
Shakespeare had taken steps to prevent her from 
benefiting — at any rate to the full extent — by 
that legal arrangement. He had barred her dower 
in the case of his latest purchase of freehold 
estate, viz., the house at Blackfriars. 1 Such pro- 



1 Mr. Charles Elton, Q.C., has been kind enough to give me a legal 
opinion on this point. He wrote to me on December 9, 1897: 'I 
have looked to the authorities with my friend Mr. Herbert Mackay, 
and there is no doubt that Shakespeare barred the dower.' Mr. 
Mackay's opinion is couched in the following terms : ' The conveyance 
of the Blackfriars estate to William Shakespeare in 161 3 shows that 
the estate was conveyed to Shakespeare, Johnson, Jackson, and 
Hemming as joint tenants, and therefore the dower of Shakespeare's 
wife would be barred unless he were the survivor of the four bar- 
gainees.' That was a remote contingency, which did not arise, and 
Shakespeare always retained the power of making ' another settlement 
when the trustees were shrinking.' Thus the bar was for practical pur- 
poses perpetual, and disposes of Mr. Halliwell-Phillipps's assertion that 



THE CLOSE OF LIFE 275 

cedure is pretty conclusive proof that he had the 
intention of excluding her from the enjoyment of his 
possessions after his death. But, however plausible 
the theory that his relations with her were from 
first to last wanting in sympathy, it is improbable 
that either the slender mention of her in the will or 
the barring of her dower was designed by Shake- 
speare to make public his indifference or dislike. 
Local tradition subsequently credited her with a wish 
to be buried in his grave ; and her epitaph proves 
that she inspired her daughters with genuine affec- 
tion. Probably her ignorance of affairs and the 
infirmities of age (she was past sixty) combined to 
unfit her in the poet's eyes for the control of property, 
and, as an act of ordinary prudence, he committed her 
to the care of his elder daughter, who inherited, accord- 
ing to such information as is accessible, some of his own 
shrewdness, and had a capable adviser in her husband. 
This elder daughter, Susannah Hall, was, accord- 
ing to the will, to become the mistress of New Place, 
and practically of all the poet's estate. She 

His heiress. . 

received (with remainder to her issue in 
strict entail) New Place, all the land, barns, and gar- 
dens at and near Stratford (except the tenement in 
Chapel Lane), and the house in Blackfriars, London, 
while she and her husband were appointed executors 
and residuary legatees, with full rights over nearly all 
the poet's household furniture and personal belong- 

Shakespeare's wife was entitled to dower in one form or another from 
all his real estate. Cf. Davidson on Conveyancing ; Littleton, sect. 
45; Coke upon Littleton, ed. Hargrave, p. 379^, note I. 



276 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

ings. To their only child and the testator's grand- 
daughter, or 'niece,' Elizabeth Hall, was bequeathed 
the poet's plate, with the exception of his broad silver 
and gilt bowl, which was reserved for his younger 
daughter, Judith. To his younger daughter he also left, 
with the tenement in Chapel Lane (in remainder to the 
elder daughter), 150/. in money, of which 100/., her 
marriage portion, was to be paid within a year, and 
another 150/. to be paid to her if alive three years 
after the date of the will. 1 To the poet's sister, Joan 
Hart, whose husband, William Hart, predeceased the 
testator by only six days, he left, besides a contin- 
gent reversionary interest in Judith's pecuniary leg- 
acy, his wearing apparel, 20/. in money, a life interest 
in the Henley Street property, with 5/. for each of 
her three sons, William, Thomas, and Michael. To 
the poor of Stratford he gave 10/., and to Mr. Thomas 
Legacies Combe (apparently a brother of William, 
to Mends. f ^he enclosure controversy) his sword. 
To each of his Stratford friends, Hamlett Sadler, 
William Reynoldes, Anthony Nash, and John 
Nash, and to each of his ' fellows ' (i.e. theatrical 
colleagues in London), John Heming, Richard Bur- 
bage, and Henry Condell, he left xxvj.s\ xiijd., with 
which to buy memorial rings. His godson, William 
Walker, received ' xx ' shillings in gold. 

Before 1623 2 an elaborate monument, by a London 

1 A hundred and fifty pounds is described as a substantial jointure 
in Merry Wives, in. iii. 1. 49. 

2 Leonard Digges, in commendatory verses before the First Folio of 
1623, wrote that Shakespeare's works would be alive 

[When] Time dissolves thy Stratford monument. 



THE CLOSE OF LIFE 277 

sculptor of Dutch birth, Gerard Johnson, was erected 
to Shakespeare's memory in the chancel of 
the parish church. 1 It includes a half-length 
bust, depicting the dramatist on the point of writing. 
The fingers of the right hand are disposed as if 
holding a pen, and under the left hand lies a quarto 
sheet of paper. The inscription, which was appar- 
ently by a London friend, runs : 

Judicio Pylium, genio Socratem, arte Maronem, 
Terra tegit, populus mseret, Olympus habet. 

Stay passenger, why goest thou by so fast? 
Read, if thou canst, whom envious death hath plast 
Within this monument; Shakespeare with whome 
Quick nature dide; whose name doth deck ys tombe 
Far more than cost; sith all yt he hath writt 
Leaves living art but page to serve his witt. 

Obiit ano. doi 161 6 .Etatis 53 Die 23 Ap. 

At the opening of Shakespeare's career Chettle 
wrote of his ' civil demeanour ' and of the reports of 
Personal ' his uprightness of dealing which argues his 
character, honesty.' In 1601 — when near the zenith of 
his fame — he was apostrophised as ' sweet Master 
Shakespeare ' in the play of ' The Return from 
Parnassus,' and that adjective was long after associ- 
ated with his name. In 1604 one Anthony Scoloker 
in a poem called ' Daiphantus ' bestowed on him the 
epithet 'friendly.' After the close of his career 
Jonson wrote of him : ' I loved the man and do 

1 Cf. Dugdale, Diary, 1827, p. 99 ; see under article on Bernard 
Janssen in the Dictionary of National Biography. 



278 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

honour his memory, on this side idolatry as much as 
any. He was, indeed, honest and of an open and free 
nature.' 2 No other contemporary left on record any 
definite impression of Shakespeare's personal char- 
acter, and the ' Sonnets,' which alone of his literary 
work can be held to throw any illumination on a 
personal trait, mainly reveal him in the light of one 
who was willing to conform to all the conventional 
methods in vogue for strengthening the bonds between 
a poet and a great patron. His literary practices 
and aims were those of contemporary men of letters, 
and the difference in the quality of his work and theirs 
was due not to conscious endeavour on his part to act 
otherwise than they, but to the magic and involuntary 
working of his genius. He seemed unconscious of 
his marvellous superiority to his professional com- 
rades. The references in his will to his fellow-actors, 
and the spirit in which (as they announce in the First 
Folio) they approached the task of collecting his works 
after his death, corroborate the description of him 
as a sympathetic friend of gentle, unassuming mien. 
The later traditions brought together by Aubrey 
depict him as ' very good company, and of a very 
ready and pleasant smooth wit,' and there is much in 
other early posthumous references to suggest a genial, 
if not a convivial, temperament, linked to a quiet turn 
for good-humoured satire. But Bohemian ideals and 
modes of life had no genuine attraction for Shake- 
speare. His extant work attests his 'copious' and 

1 'Timber,' in Works, 1641. 



THE CLOSE OF LIFE 279 

continuous industry, 1 and with his literary power and 
sociability there clearly went the shrewd capacity of 
a man of business. Pope had just warrant for the 
surmise that he 

For gain not glory winged his roving flight, 
And grew immortal in his own despite. 

His literary attainments and successes were chiefly 
valued as serving the prosaic end of providing per- 
manently for himself and his daughters. His highest 
ambition was to restore among his fellow-townsmen 
the family repute which his father's misfortunes had 
imperilled. Ideals so homely are reckoned rare among 
poets, but Chaucer and Sir Walter Scott, among 
writers of exalted genius, vie with Shakespeare in the 
sobriety of their personal aims and in the sanity of 
their mental attitude towards life's ordinary incidents. 

1 John Webster, the dramatist, made vague reference in the 
address before his 'White Divel' in 1612 to 'the right happy and 
copious industry of M. Shakespeare, M. Decker, and M. Heywood.' 



28o WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



XVII 

SURVIVORS AND DESCENDANTS 

Shakespeare's widow died on August 6, 1623, at 
the age of sixty-seven, and was buried near her 
The husband inside the chancel two days later. 

survivors. Some affectionately phrased Latin elegiacs 
— doubtless from Dr. Hall's pen — were inscribed on 
a brass plate fastened to the stone above her grave. 1 
The younger daughter, Judith, resided with her hus- 
band, Thomas Quiney, at The Cage, a house which he 
leased in Bridge Street from 1616 till 1652. There he 
\.. _ carried on the trade of a vintner, and took part 

Mistress ' \ 

Judith in municipal affairs, acting as a councillor 
Qumey. f rom y6\j and as chamberlain in 162 1-2 
and 1622-3 ; but after 1630 his affairs grew embar- 
rassed, and he left Stratford late in 1652 for London, 
where he seems to have died a few months later. Of 
his three sons by Judith, the eldest, Shakespeare 
(baptised on November 23, 1616), was buried in Strat- 
ford Churchyard on May 8, 1617; the second son, 

1 The words run : ' Heere lyeth interred the bodye of Anne, wife of 
Mr. William Shakespeare, who depted. this life the 6th day of August, 
1623, being of the age of 67 yeares. 

' Vbera, tu, mater, tu lac vitamq. dedisti, 
Vae mihi; pro tanto munere saxa dabo! 
Quam mallem, amoueat lapidem bonus Angel[us] ore, 

Exeat ut Christi Corpus, imago tua. 
Sed nil vota valent; venias cito, Christe; resurget, 
Clausa licet tumulo, mater, et astra petet.' 



SURVIVORS AND DESCENDANTS 28 1 

Richard (baptised on February 9, 161 7-1 8), was 
buried on January 28, 1638-9; and the third son, 
Thomas (baptised on January 23, 1619-20), was 
buried on February 26, 1638-9. Judith survived her 
husband, sons, and sister, dying at Stratford on 
February 9, 166 1-2, in her seventy-seventh year. 

The poet's elder daughter, Mrs. Susannah Hall, re- 
sided at New Place till her death. Her sister Judith 
alienated to her the Chapel Place tenement before 
Mistress x 633> but that, with the interest in the 
Susannah Stratford tithes, she soon disposed of. Her 
husband, Dr. John Hall, died on Novem- 
ber 25, 1635. In 1642, James Cooke, a surgeon in 
attendance on some Royalist troops stationed at 
Stratford, visited Mrs. Hall and examined manu- 
scripts in her possession, but they were apparently of 
her husband's, not of her father's, composition. 1 From 
July 11 to 13, 1643, Queen Henrietta Maria, while jour- 
neying from Newark to Oxford, was billeted on Mrs. 
Hall at New Place for three days, and was visited 
there by Prince Rupert. Mrs. Hall was buried beside 
her husband in Stratford Churchyard on July 11, 
1649, an d a rhyming inscription, describing her as 
1 witty above her sex,' was engraved on her tomb- 
stone. The whole inscription ran : ' Heere lyeth ye. 
body of Svsanna, wife to John Hall, Gent. ye. davghter 
of William Shakespeare, Gent. She deceased ye. 
nth of Jvly, a.d. 1649, aged 66. 

' Witty above her sexe, but that's not all, 
Wise to Salvation was good Mistress Hall, 

1 Cf. Hall, Select Observations, ed. Cooke, 1657. 



282 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Something of Shakespere was in that, but this 
Wholy of him with whom she's now in blisse. 
Then, passenger, ha'st ne're ateare, 

To weepe with her that wept with all? 
That wept, yet set herselfe to chere 

Them up with comforts cordiall. 
Her Love shall live, her mercy spread, 
When thou hast ne're a teare to shed.' 

Mrs. Hall's only child, Elizabeth, was the last 
surviving descendant of the poet. In April 1626 she 
The last married her first husband, Thomas Nash of 
descen- Stratford (b. 1593), who studied at Lincoln's 
Inn, was a man of property, and, dying 
childless at New Place on April 4, 1647, was buried 
in Stratford Church next day. At Billesley, a village 
four miles from Stratford, on June 5, 1649, Mrs. Nash 
married, as a second husband, a widower, John Bernard 
or Barnard of Abington, Northamptonshire, who was 
knighted by Charles II in 1661. About the same 
date she seems to have abandoned New Place for her 
husband's residence at Abington. Dying without 
issue, she was buried there on February 17, 1669-70. 
Her husband survived her four years, and was buried 
beside her. 1 On her mother's death in 1649 Lady 
Barnard inherited under the poet's will the land near 
Stratford, New Place, the house at Blackfriars, and (on 
the death of the poet's sister, Joan Hart, in 1646) the 
houses in Henley Street, while her father, Dr. Hall, left 
her in 1635 a house at Acton with a meadow. She 
sold the Blackfriars house, and apparently the Strat- 
ford land, before 1667. By her will, dated January 

1 Baker, Northamptonshire, i. io; New Shaksp. Soc. Trans. 
1880-5, pt. ii. pp. I3t-i5t- 



SURVIVORS AND DESCENDANTS 283 

1669-70, and proved in the following March, she left 
small bequests to the daughters of Thomas Hatha- 
way, of the family of her grandmother, the poet's 
wife. The houses in Henley Street passed to her 
cousin, Thomas Hart, the grandson of the poet's 
sister Joan, and they remained in the possession of 
Thomas's direct descendants till 1806 (the male line 
expired on the death of John Hart in 1800). By her 
will Lady Barnard also ordered New Place to be sold, 
and it was purchased on May 18, 1675, by Sir Edward 
Walker, through whose daughter Barbara, wife of 
Sir John Clopton, it reverted to the Clopton family. 
Sir John rebuilt it in 1702. On the death of his son 
Hugh in 1752, it was bought by the Rev. Francis 
Gastrell (y.1768), who demolished the new building 
in 1759. 1 

Of Shakespeare's three brothers, only one, Gilbert, 
seems to have survived him. Edmund, the youngest 
Shake- brother, ' a player,' was buried at St. 
speare's Saviour's Church, Southwark, ' with a fore- 
go ers. n00 ne knell of the great bell,' on December 
31, 1607; he was in his twenty-eighth year. Richard, 
John Shakespeare's third son, died at Stratford in 
February 161 3, aged 29. 'Gilbert Shakespeare ado- 
lescens,' who was buried at Stratford on February 3, 
1611-12, was doubtless son of the poet's next 
brother Gilbert; the latter, having nearly completed 
his forty-sixth year, could scarcely be described as 
' adolescens ' ; his death is not recorded, but according 
to Oldys he survived to a patriarchal age. 

1 Hallivvell-Phillipps, Hist, of New Place, 1864, fol. 



284 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



XVIII 

AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 

Much controversy has arisen over the spelling of 
the poet's surname. It has been proved capable of 
c n . e four thousand variations. 1 The name of the 

Spelling of 

the poet's poet's father is entered sixty-six times in 
the council books of Stratford, and is spelt 
in sixteen ways. The commonest form is ' Shax- 
peare.' Five autographs of the poet of undisputed 
authenticity are extant ; his signature to the indenture 
Autograph relating to the purchase of the property in 
signatures. Blackfriars, dated March 10, 1612-13 (since 
1 84 1 in the Guildhall Library); his signature to the 
mortgage-deed relating to the same purchase, dated 
March n, 1612-13 (since 1858 in the British Museum), 
and the three signatures on the three sheets of his 
will, dated March 25, 161 5-16 (now at Somerset 
House). In all the signatures some of the letters are 
represented by recognised signs of abbreviation. The 
signature to the first document is ' William Shakspere,' 
though in all other portions of the deeds the name is 

1 Wise, Autograph of 'William Shakespeare . . . together with 4,000 
ways of spelling the name, Philadelphia, 1869. 



AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 285 

spelt ' Shakespeare.' The signature to the second 
document has been interpreted both as Shakspere and 
Shakspeare. The ink of the first signature in the 
will has now faded almost beyond decipherment, but 
that it was ' Shakspere ' may be inferred from the 
facsimile made by Steevens in 1776. The second and 
third signatures to the will, which are also somewhat 
difficult to decipher, have been read both as Shakspere 
and Shakspeare ; but a close examination suggests 
that whatever the second signature may be, the third 
is ' Shakespeare.' Shakspere is the spelling of the 
alleged autograph in the British Museum copy of 
Florio's ' Montaigne,' but the genuineness of that 
signature is disputable. 1 Shakespeare was the form 
adopted in the full signature appended to the dedica- 
tory epistles of the ' Venus and Adonis ' of 1 593 and 
the ' Lucrece ' of 1594, volumes which were produced 
under the poet's supervision. It is the spelling 
adopted on the title-pages of the majority of contem- 
porary editions of his works, whether or not produced 
under his supervision. It is adopted in almost all 
the published references to the poet during the seven- 
teenth century. It appears in the grant of arms in 
1596, in the license to the players of 1603, and in the 
text of all the legal documents relating to the poet's 
property. The poet, like most of his contemporaries, 
acknowledged no finality on the subject. According 
to the best authority, he spelt his surname in two 
ways when signing his will. There is consequently 

1 See the article on Florio, John, in the Dictionary of National 
Biography, and Sir Frederick Madden's Observations on an Autograph 
of Shakspere, 1838. 



286 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

no good ground for abandoning the form Shakespeare 
which is sanctioned by legal and literary custom. 1 

Aubrey reported that Shakespeare was ' a hand- 
some well-shap't man,' but no portrait exists which can 
shake- ^e sa ^ w ith aDsoru te certainty to have been 
speare's executed during his lifetime, although one 
has recently been discovered with a good 
claim to that distinction. Only two of the extant 
portraits are positively known to have been produced 
within a short period after his death. These are the 
bust in Stratford Church and the frontispiece to the 
folio of 1623. Each is an inartistic attempt at a 
posthumous likeness. There is considerable dis- 
crepancy between the two ; their main points of re- 
semblance are the baldness on the top of the head 
and the fulness of the hair about the ears. The bust 
was by Gerard Johnson or Janssen, who was a Dutch 
The strat- stonemason or tombmaker settled in South- 
ford bust. wa rk. It was set up in the church before 
1623, and is a rudely carved specimen of mortuary 
sculpture. There are marks about the forehead and 
ears which suggest that the face was fashioned from 
a death mask, but the workmanship is at all points 
clumsy. The round face and eyes present a heavy, 
unintellectual expression. The bust was originally 
coloured, but in 1793 Malone caused it to be white- 
washed. In 1 86 1 the whitewash was removed, and 
the colours, as far as traceable, restored. The eyes 
are light hazel, the hair and beard auburn. There 

1 Cf. Halliwell-Phillipps New Lamps or Old, 1880; Malone, 
Inquiry, 1796. 



AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 287 

have been numberless reproductions, both engraved 
and photographic. It was first engraved — very im- 
perfectly — for Rowe's edition in 1709; then by 
Vertue for Pope's edition of 1725 ; and by Gravelot 
for Hanmer's edition in 1 744. A good engraving by 
William Ward appeared in 18 16. A phototype and 
a chromo-phototype, issued by the New Shakspere 
Society, are the best reproductions for the purposes 
The • strat °^ stu dy. The pretentious painting known 
ford ' por- as the ' Stratford ' portrait, and presented in 
1867 by W. O. Hunt, town clerk of Stratford, 
to the Birthplace Museum, where it is very promi- 
nently displayed, was probably painted from the bust 
late in the eighteenth century ; it lacks either historic 
or artistic interest. 

The engraved portrait — nearly a half-length — 
which was printed on the title-page of the folio of 1623, 
Droe- was ky Martin Droeshout. On the oppo- 

shout's en- site page lines by Ben Jonson congratulate 
' the graver ' on having satisfactorily ' hit ' 
the poet's 'face.' Jonson's testimony does no credit 
to his artistic discernment ; the expression of counte- 
nance, which is very crudely rendered, is neither, 
distinctive nor lifelike. The face is long and the 
forehead high ; the top of the head is bald, but the 
hair falls in abundance over the ears. There is a scanty 
moustache and a thin tuft under the lower lip. A stiff 
and wide collar, projecting horizontally, conceals the 
neck. The coat is closely buttoned and elaborately 
bordered, especially at the shoulders. The dimensions 
of the head and face are disproportionately large as 



288 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

compared with those of the body. In the unique proof 
copy which belonged to Halliwell-Phillipps (now with 
his collection in America) the tone is clearer than in 
the ordinary copies, and the shadows are less darkened 
by cross-hatching and coarse dotting. The engraver, 
Martin Droeshout, belonged to a Flemish family of 
painters and engravers long settled in London, where 
he was born in 1601. He was thus fifteen years old 
at the time of Shakespeare's death in 16 16, and it is 
consequently improbable that he had any personal 
knowledge of the dramatist. The engraving was 
doubtless produced by Droeshout very shortly before 
the publication of the First Folio in 1623, when he 
had completed his twenty-second year. It thus 
belongs to the outset of the engraver's professional 
career, in which he never achieved extended practice 
or reputation. A copy of the Droeshout engraving, 
by William Marshall, was prefixed to Shakespeare's 
'Poems' in 1640, and William Faithorne made 
another copy for the frontispiece of the edition of 
'The Rape of Lucrece ' published in 1655. 

There is little doubt that young Droeshout in 
'fashioning his engraving worked from a painting, and 
The'Droe there * s a likelihood that the original picture 
shout • from which the youthful engraver worked has 
painting. i ate iy come to light. As recently as 1892 
Mr. Edgar Flower, of Stratford-on-Avon, discovered 
in the possession of Mr. H. C. Clements, a private 
gentleman with artistic tastes residing at Peckham 
Rye, a portrait alleged to represent Shakespeare. 
The picture, which was faded and somewhat worm- 



AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 289 

eaten, dated beyond all doubt from the early years of 
the seventeenth century. It was painted on a panel 
formed of two planks of old elm, and in the upper 
left-hand corner was the inscription 'Will 111 Shake- 
speare, 1609.' Mr. Clements purchased the portrait 
of an obscure dealer about 1840, and knew nothing 
of its history, beyond what he set down on a slip of 
paper when he acquired it. The note that he then 
wrote and pasted on the box in which he preserved 
the picture ran as iollows : ' The original portrait of 
Shakespeare, from which the now famous Droeshout 
engraving was taken and inserted in the first collected 
edition of his works, published in 1623, being seven 
years after his death. The picture was painted nine 
\yere seven] years before his death, and consequently 
sixteen \_vere fourteen] years before it was published. 
. . . The picture was publicly exhibited in London 
seventy years ago, and many thousands went to see it.' 
In all its details and in its comparative dimensions, 
especially in the disproportion between the size of 
the- head and that of the body, this picture is 
identical with the Droeshout engraving. Though 
coarsely and stiffly drawn, the face is far more 
skilfully presented than in the engraving, and the 
expression of countenance betrays some artistic 
sentiment which is absent from the print. Connois- 
seurs, including Sir Edward Poynter, Mr. Sidney 
Colvin, and Mr. Lionel Cust, have almost unre- 
servedly pronounced the picture to be anterior in 
date to the engraving, and they have reached the 
conclusion that in all probability Martin Droeshout 



290 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

directly based his work upon the painting. Influences 
of an early seventeenth-century Flemish school are 
plainly discernible in the picture, and it is just possible 
that it is the production of an uncle of the young en- 
graver Martin Droeshout, who bore the same name 
as his nephew, and was naturalised in this country on 
January 25, 1608, when he was described as a ' painter 
of Brabant.' Although the history of the portrait 
rests on critical conjecture and on no external con- 
temporary evidence, there seems good ground for re- 
garding it as a portrait of Shakespeare painted in his 
lifetime — in the forty-fifth year of his age. No other 
pictorial representation of the poet has equally serious 
claims to be treated as contemporary with himself, and 
it therefore presents features of unique interest. On 
the death of its owner, Mr. Clements, in 1895, the 
painting was purchased by Mrs. Charles Flower, and 
was presented to the Memorial Picture Gallery at 
Stratford, where it now hangs. No attempt at res- 
toration has been made. A photogravure forms the 
frontispiece to the present volume. 1 

Of the same type as the Droeshout engraving, 
although less closely resembling it than the picture 
just described, is the ' Ely House ' portrait, (now the 
property of the Birthplace Trustees at Stratford), 

1 Mr. Lionel Cust, director of the National Portrait Gallery, who has 
little doubt of the genuineness of the picture, gave an interesting account 
of it at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries on December 12, 1895. 
Mr. Cust's paper is printed in the Society's Proceedings, second series, 
vol. xvi. p. 42. Mr. Salt Brassington, the librarian of the Shakespeare 
Memorial Library, has given a careful description of it in the Illustrated 
Catalogue of the Pictures in the Memorial Gallery, 1896, pp. 78-83. 



AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 29 1 

which formerly belonged to Thomas Turton, Bishop 
of Ely, and it is inscribed ' m. 39 x. 1603.' x This 
painting is of high artistic value. The features are of 
a far more attractive and intellectual cast than in either 
the Droeshout painting or engraving, and the many 
differences in detail raise doubts as to whether the 
person represented can have been intended for 
Shakespeare. Experts are of opinion that the pict- 
ure was painted early in the seventeenth century. 

Early in Charles II's reign Lord Chancellor 
Clarendon added a portrait of Shakespeare to his 
great gallery in his house in St. James's. Mention 
is made of it in a letter from the diarist John Evelyn 
to his friend Samuel Pepys in 1689, but Clarendon's 
collection was dispersed at the end of the seventeenth 
century and the picture has not been traced. 2 

Of the numerous extant paintings which have 
been described as portraits of Shakespeare, only the 
Later ' Droeshout ' portrait and the ' Ely House ' 

portraits. portrait, both of which are at Stratford, 
bear any definable resemblance to the folio engraving 
or the bust in the church. 3 In spite of their admitted 

1 Harper's Magazine, May 1897. 

2 Cf. Evelyn's Diary and Correspondence, hi. 444. 

3 Numberless portraits have been falsely identified with Shakespeare, 
and it would be futile to attempt to make the record of the pretended 
portraits complete. Upwards of sixty have been offered for sale to the 
National Portrait Gallery since its foundation in 1856, and not one of 
these has proved to possess the remotest claim to authenticity. The 
following are some of the wholly unauthentic portraits that have at- 
tracted public attention : Three portraits assigned to Zucchero, who 
left England in 1580, and cannot have had any relations with Shake- 
speare — one in the Art Museum, Boston, U.S.A.; another, formerly 



292 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

imperfections, those presentments can alone be held 
indisputably to have been honestly designed to depict 
the poet's features. They must be treated as the 
standards of authenticity in judging of the genuine- 
ness of other portraits claiming to be of an early date. 
Of other alleged portraits which are extant, the 
most famous and interesting is the ' Chandos ' portrait, 
The now in the National Portrait Gallery. Its ped- 

• Chandos' igree suggests that it was intended to repre- 
pm rai * sent the poet, but numerous and conspicuous 
divergences from the authenticated likenesses show 
that it was painted from fanciful descriptions of him 
some years after his death. The face is bearded, and 
rings adorn the ears. Oldys reported that it was from 
the brush of Burbage, Shakespeare's fellow-actor, who 
had some reputation as a limner, 1 and that it had be- 
longed to Joseph Taylor, an actor contemporary with 
Shakespeare. These rumours are not corroborated ; 
but there is no doubt that it was at one time the prop- 
erty of D'Avenant, and that it subsequently belonged 
successively to the actor Betterton and to Mrs. Barry 
the actress. In 1693 Sir Godfrey Kneller made a copy 

the property of Richard Cosway, R.A., and afterwards of Mr. J. A. 
Langford of Birmingham (engraved in mezzotint by H. Green) ; and 
a third belonging to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who purchased it in 
1862. At Hampton Court is a wholly unauthentic portrait of the 
Chandos type, which was at one time at Penshurst ; it bears the legend 
' /Etatis suae 34' (cf. Law's Cat. of Ha?7ipton Court, p. 234). A 
portrait inscribed 'setatis suae 47, 161 1,' belonging to Clement Kingston 
of Ashbourne, Derbyshire, was engraved in mezzotint by G. F. Storm 
in 1846. 

1 In the picture-gallery at Dulwich is ' a woman's head on a boord 
done by Mr. Burbidge, ye actor ' — a well-authenticated example of the 
actor's art. 



AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 293 

as a gift for Dryden. After Mrs. Barry's death in 
1 71 3 it was purchased for forty guineas by Robert 
Keck, a barrister of the Inner Temple. At length 
it reached the hands of one John Nichols, whose 
daughter married James Brydges, third duke of 
Chandos. In due time the Duke became the owner 
of the picture, and it subsequently passed, through 
Chandos's daughter, to her husband, the first Duke of 
Buckingham, whose son, the second Duke of Bucking- 
ham, sold it with the rest of his effects at Stowe in 
1848, when it was purchased by the Earl of Ellesmere. 
The latter presented it to the nation. Edward Capell 
many years before presented a copy by Ranelagh 
Barret to Trinity College, Cambridge, and other cop- 
ies are attributed to Sir Joshua Reynolds and Ozias 
Humphrey ( 1 783). It was engraved by George Vertue 
in 1 7 19 for Pope's edition (1725), and often later, one 
of the best engravings being by Yandergucht. A 
good lithograph from a tracing by Sir George Scharf 
was published by the trustees of the National Portrait 
Gallery in 1864. The Baroness Burdett-Coutts pur- 
chased in 1875 a portrait of similar type, which is 
said, somewhat doubtfully, to have belonged to John 
lord Lumley, who died in 1609, and to have formed 
part of a collection of portraits of the great men of his 
day at his house, Lumley Castle, Durham. Its early 
history is not positively authenticated, and it may 
well be an early copy of the 'Chandos' portrait. The 
' Lumley ' painting was finely chromo-lithographed in 
1863 by Vincent Brooks. 

The so-called 'Jansen' or 'Janssens' portrait, which 



294 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

belongs to Lady Guendolen Ramsden, daughter of the 
The Duke of Somerset, and is now at her resi- 

portrait. dence at Bulstrode, was first doubtfully iden- 
tified about 1770, when in the possession of Charles 
Jennens. Janssens did not come to England before 
Shakespeare's death. It is a fine portrait, but is 
unlike any other that has been associated with the 
dramatist. An admirable mezzotint by Richard 
Earlom was issued in 181 1. 

The ' Felton ' portrait, a small head on a panel, with 
The ( a high and very bald forehead (belonging 
portrait. since 1 873 to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts), 
was purchased by S. Felton of Drayton, Shropshire, 
in 1792, of J. Wilson, the owner of the Shakespeare 
Museum in Pall Mall ; it bears a late inscription, ( Gul. 
Shakespear 1597, R. B.' [i.e. Richard Burbage]. It 
was engraved by Josiah Boydell for George Steevens 
in 1797, and by James Neagle for Isaac Reed's edition 
in 1803. Fuseli declared it to be the work of a Dutch 
artist, but the painters Romney and Lawrence re- 
garded it as of English workmanship of the sixteenth 
century. Steevens held that it was the original pict- 
ure whence both Droeshout and Marshall made their 
engravings, but there are practically no points of re- 
semblance between it and the prints. 

The 'Soest' or 'Zoust' portrait — in the possession 
T he , of Sir John Lister-Kaye of the Grange, 
portrait. Wakefield — was in the collection of Thomas 
Wright, painter, of Covent Garden in 1725, when 
John Simon engraved it. Soest was born twenty-one 
years after Shakespeare's death, and the portrait is 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE. 



From a plaster-cast of the terra-cotta bust now in the possession of the Gar- 
rick Club. 



AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 295 

only on fanciful grounds identified with the poet. A 
chalk drawing by Joseph Michael Wright, obviously 
inspired by the Soest portrait, is the property of Sir 
Arthur Hodgson of Clopton House, and is on loan at 
the Memorial Gallery, Stratford. 

A well-executed miniature by Hilliard, at one 
Miniatures, time in the possession of William Somerville 
the poet, and now the property of Sir Stafford North- 
cote, bart., was engraved by Agar for vol. ii. of the 
'Variorum Shakespeare' of 1821, and in Wivell's 
'Inquiry,' 1827. It has little claim to attention as a 
portrait of the dramatist. Another miniature (called 
the 'Auriol' portrait), of doubtful authenticity, for- 
merly belonged to Mr. Lumsden Propert, and a third 
is at Warwick Castle. 

A bust, said to be of Shakespeare, was discovered 
in 1845 bricked up in a wall in Spode & Copeland's 
The china warehouse in Lincoln's Inn Fields. 

Gamck The warehouse had been erected on the site 
Club bust, of the Duke > s Theatre, which was built by 

D'Avenant in 1660. The bust, which is of black 
terra-cotta, and bears traces of Italian workmanship, is 
believed to have adorned the proscenium of the Duke's 
Theatre. It was acquired by the surgeon William 
Clift, from whom it passed to Cliffs son-in-law, 
Richard (afterwards Sir Richard) Owen the natural- 
ist. The latter sold it to the Duke of Devonshire, 
who presented it in 185 1 to the Garrick Club, after 
having two copies made in plaster. One of these 
copies is now in the Shakespeare Memorial Gallery 
at Stratford, and from it an engraving has been made 
for reproduction in this volume. 



296 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

The Kesselstadt death-mask was discovered by 
Dr. Ludwig Becker, librarian at the ducal palace at 
Aiie ed Darmstadt, in a rag-shop at Mayence in 
death- 1 849. The features resemble those of an 

alleged portrait of Shakespeare (dated 1637) 
which Dr. Becker purchased in 1847. This picture 
had long been in the possession of the family of Count 
Francis von Kesselstadt of Mayence, who died in 
1843. Dr. Becker brought the mask and the picture 
to England in 1849, an d Richard Owen supported 
the theory that the mask was taken from Shake- 
speare's face after death, and was the foundation of 
the bust in Stratford Church. The mask was for a 
long time in Dr. Becker's private apartments at the 
ducal palace, Darmstadt. 1 The features are singularly 
attractive ; but the chain of evidence which would 
identify them with Shakespeare is incomplete. 2 

A monument, the expenses of which were defrayed 

1 It is now the property of Frau Oberst Becker, the discoverer's 
daughter-in-law. Darmstadt, Heidelbergerstrasse in. 

2 Some account of Shakespeare's portraits will be found in the fol- 
lowing works : James Boaden, Inquiry into various Pictures and Prints 
of Shakespeare, 1824; Abraham Wivell, Inquiry into Shakespeare 's 
Portraits, 1 827, with engravings by B. and W. Holl; George Scharf, 
Principal Portraits of Shakespeare, 1864; J. Hain Friswell, Life-Por- 
traits of Shakespeare, 1864 ; William Page, Study of Shakespeare 's 
Portraits, 18 76; Ingleby, Man and Book, 1877, pp. 84 seq. ; J.Parker 
Norris, Portraits of Shakespeare, Philadelphia, 1885, with numerous 
plates; Illustrated Cat. of Portraits in Shakespeare's Memorial at 
Stratford, 1896. In 1 885 Mr. Walter Rogers Furness issued, at 
Philadelphia, a volume of composite portraits, combining the Droeshout 
engraving and the Stratford bust with the Chandos, Jansen, Felton, and 
Stratford portraits. 



AUTOGRAPHS, PORTRAITS, AND MEMORIALS 297 

by public subscription, was set up in the Poets' 

Memorials Corner in Westminster Abbey in 1 74 1. Pope 
in sculpt- and the Earl of Burlington were among 
the promoters. The design was by William 
Kent, and the statue of Shakespeare was executed 
by Peter Scheemakers. 1 Another statue was executed 
by Roubiliac for Garrick, who bequeathed it to the 
British Museum in 1779. A third statue, freely 
adapted from the works of Scheemakers and Roubi- 
liac, was executed for Baron Albert Grant and was 
set up by him as a gift to the metropolis in Leicester 
Square, London, in 1879. A fourth statue (by Mr. 
J. Q. A. Ward) was placed in 1882 in the Central 
Park, New York. A fifth in bronze, by M. Paul Four- 
nier, which was erected in Paris in 1888 at the expense 
of an English resident, Mr. W. Knighton, stands at the 
point where the Avenue de Messine meets the Boule- 
vard Haussmann. A sixth memorial in sculpture, by 
Lord Ronald Gower, the most elaborate and ambitious 
of all, stands in the garden of the Shakespeare Memo- 
rial-buildings, and was unveiled in 1888 ; Shakespeare 
is seated on a high pedestal ; below, at each side of 
the pedestal, stand figures of four of Shakespeare's 
principal characters : Lady Macbeth, Hamlet, Prince 
Hal, and Sir John Falstaff. 

At Stratford, the Birthplace, which was acquired 
by the public in 1846 and converted into a museum, is, 
with Anne Hathaway's cottage (which was acquired 
by the Birthplace Trustees in 1892), a place of pil- 
grimage for visitors from all parts of the globe. The 

1 Cf. Gentleman 's Magazine, 1741, p. 105. 



298 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

27,038 persons who visited it in 1896 and the 26,510 
persons who visited it in 1897 represented over forty 
nationalities. The site of the demolished New Place, 
with the gardens, was also purchased by public sub- 
scription in 1 86 1, and now forms a public garden. 
Of a new memorial building on the river-bank at 
Stratford, consisting of a theatre, picture-gallery, and 
library, the foundation-stone was laid on April 23, 
1877. The theatre was opened exactly two years 
later, when ' Much Ado about Nothing ' was per- 
formed, with Helen Faucit (Lady Martin) as Beatrice 
and Barry Sullivan as Benedick. Performances of 
Shakespeare's plays have since been given annually 
during April. The library and picture-gallery were 
opened in 188 1. 1 A memorial Shakespeare library 
was opened at Birmingham on April 23, 1868, to 
commemorate the tercentenary of 1864, an d, although 
destroyed by fire in 1879, was restored in 1882; it 
now possesses nearly ten thousand volumes relating 
to Shakespeare. 

1 A History of the Shakespeare Memorial, Stratford-on-Avon, 1882; 
Illustrated Catalogue of Pictures in the Shakespeare Memorial, 1896. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 299 



XIX 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Only two of Shakespeare's works — his narrative 
poems 'Venus and Adonis' and 'Lucrece' — were 
published with his sanction and co-operation. These 
poems were the first specimens of his work to appear 
in print, and they passed in his lifetime through a 
greater number of editions than any of his plays. 
At the time of his death in 1616 there had been 
printed in quarto seven editions of his ' Venus and 
Quartos of Adonis ' (i 593, 1594, 1596, 1599, 1600, 

inth P e p e o^?s and two in l6 ° 2 )' and five editions of 
lifetime: his ' Lucrece ' (1594, 1598, 1600, 1607, 161 6). 
There was only one lifetime edition of the ' Sonnets,' 
Thorpe's surreptitious venture of 1609; 1 but three 
editions were issued of the piratical ' Passionate 
Pilgrim,' which was fraudulently assigned to Shake- 
speare by the publisher William Jaggard, although 
it only contained a few occasional poems by him 
(1599, 1600 no copy known, and 1612). 

Of posthumous editions in quarto of the two 

1 This was facsimiled in 1862, and again by Mr. Griggs in 1880. 



300 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

narrative poems in the seventeenth century, there 
Posthu- were two of ' Lucrece ' — viz. in 1624 ('the 
Ssof?hT sixth edition') and in 1655 (with John 
poems. Quarles's 'Banishment of Tarquin ') — and 
there were as many as six editions of 'Venus ' (1617, 
1620, 1627, two in 1630 and 1636), making thirteen 
editions in all in forty-three years. No later editions 
of these two poems were issued in the seventeenth 
century. They were next reprinted together with 
1 The Passionate Pilgrim ' in 1 707, and thenceforth 
they usually figured, with the addition of the ' Sonnets,' 
in collected editions of Shakespeare's works. 

A so-called first collected edition of Shakespeare's 
' Poems ' in 1640 (London, by T. Cotes for I. Benson) 
The was mainly a reissue of the ' Sonnets,' 

•Poems' but it omitted six (Nos. xviii., xix., xliii., 
o 1640. Yy{ ^ ixxv., and lxxvi.) and it included the 
twenty poems of ' The Passionate Pilgrim, with 
some other pieces by other authors. Marshall's copy 
of the Droeshout engraving of 1623 formed the 
frontispiece. There were prefatory poems by Leonard 
Digges and John Warren, as well as an address ' to the 
reader' signed with the initials of the publisher. There 
Shakespeare's ' Sonnets ' were described as ' serene, 
clear, and elegantly plain ; such gentle strains as shall 
re-create and not perplex your brain. No intricate 
or cloudy stuff to puzzle intellect. Such as will raise 
your admiration to his praise.' A chief point of in- 
terest in the volume of 'Poems' of 1640 is the fact 
that the ' Sonnets ' were printed then in a different 
order to that which was followed in the volume of 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 301 

1609. Thus the poem numbered lxvii. in the original 
edition opens the reissue, and what has been regarded 
as the crucial poem beginning 

Two loves I have of comfort and despair, 

which was in 1609 numbered cxliv., takes the thirty- 
second place in 1640. In most cases a more or less 
fanciful general title was placed in the second edition 
at the head of each sonnet, but in a few instances a 
single title serves for short sequences of two or three 
sonnets which are printed as independent poems con- 
tinuously without spacing. The poems drawn from 
' The Passionate Pilgrim ' are intermingled with the 
1 Sonnets,' together with extracts from Thomas Hey- 
wood's ' General History of Women,' although no 
hint is given that they are not Shakespeare's work. 
The edition concludes with three epitaphs on Shake- 
speare and a short section entitled 'An addition of 
some excellent poems to those precedent by other 
Gentlemen.' The volume is of great rarity. An 
exact reprint was published in 1885. 

Of Shakespeare's plays there were in print in 
16 1 6 only sixteen (all in quarto), or eighteen if we 
Quartos of include the ' Contention,' the first draft of 
the plays < 2 Henry VI ' (1594 and 1600), and 'The 
poet's life- True Tragedy,' the first draft of '3 Henry 
time. yj ' (1595 and 1600), These sixteen quartos 

were publishers' ventures, and were undertaken with- 
out the co-operation of the author. 

Two of the plays, published thus, reached five 
editions before 1616, viz. 'Richard III' (1597, 1598, 



302 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

1602, 1605, 1612) and 'i Henry IV (1598, 1599, 

1604, 1608, 161 5). 

Three reached four editions, viz. ' Richard II ' 
(1597, 1598, 1608 supplying the deposition scene for 
the first time, 1615), ' Hamlet' (1603 imperfect, 1604, 

1605, 161 1), and 'Romeo and Juliet' (1597 imperfect, 
1599, two in 1609). 

Two reached three editions, viz. ' Henry V ' (1600 
imperfect, 1602, and 1608) and 'Pericles' (two in 
1609, 161 1 ). 

Four reached two editions, viz. ' Midsummer 
Night's Dream ' (both in 1600), ' Merchant of Venice,' 
(both in 1600), 'Lear' (both in 1608), and 'Troilus 
and Cressida ' (both in 1609). 

Five achieved only one edition, viz. ' Love's 
Labour's Lost' (1598), '2 Henry IV (1600), 'Much 
Ado' (1600), 'Titus' (1600), 'Merry Wives' (1602 
imperfect). 

Three years after Shakespeare's death — in 1619 
— there appeared a second edition of ' Merry Wives ' 
Posthu- (again imperfect) and a fourth of ' Pericles.' 
"uartos of * Othello ' was first printed posthumously in 
the plays. 1622 (4to), and in the same year sixth edi- 
tions of 'Richard III ' and ' 1 Henry IV appeared. 1 
The largest collections of the original quartos — 

1 Lithographed facsimiles of most of these volumes, with some of 
the quarto editions of the poems (forty-eight volumes in all), were 
prepared by Mr. E. W. Ashbee, and issued to subscribers by Halliwell- 
Phillipps between 1862 and 1871. A cheaper set of quarto facsimiles, 
undertaken by Mr. W. Griggs, and issued under the supervision of Dr. 
F. J. Furnivall, appeared in forty-three volumes between 1880 and 
1889. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 303 

each of which only survives in four, five, or six 
copies — are in the libraries of the Duke of Devon- 
shire, the British Museum, and Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge, and in the Bodleian Library. 1 All the quartos 
were issued in Shakespeare's day at sixpence each. 

In 1623 the first attempt was made to give the 
world a complete edition of Shakespeare's plays. 
The First Two of the dramatist's intimate friends and 
Foho. fellow-actors, John Heming and Henry 

Condell, were nominally responsible for the venture, 
but it seems to have been suggested by a small syndi- 
cate of printers and publishers, who undertook all 
pecuniary responsibility. Chief of the syndicate was 
William Jaggard, printer since 161 7 to the City of 
London, who was established in business in Fleet 
Street at the east end of St. Dunstan's Church. As 
the piratical publisher of ' The Passionate Pilgrim ' he 
had long known the commercial value of Shake- 
speare's work. In 16 13 he had extended his business 
by purchasing the stock and rights of a rival pirate, 
The pub- J ames Roberts, who had printed the quarto 
lishing editions of the ' Merchant of Venice ' and 
'Midsummer Night's Dream' in 1600 and 
the complete quarto of 'Hamlet' in 1604. Roberts 
had enjoyed for nearly twenty years the right to print 
'the players' bills,' or programmes, and he made over 

1 Perfect copies range in price, according to their rarity, from 
200/. to 300/. In 1864, at the sale of George Daniel's library, quarto 
copies of ' Love's Labour's Lost ' and of ' Merry Wives ' (first edition) 
each fetched 346/. 10s. On May 14, 1897, a c °py °f the quarto of 
'The Merchant of Venice' (printed by James Roberts in 1600) was 
sold at Sotheby's for 315/. 



304 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

that privilege to Jaggard with his other literary prop- 
erty. It was to the close personal relations with the 
playhouse managers into which the acquisition of the 
right of printing ' the players' bills ' brought Jaggard 
after 1613 that the inception of the scheme of the 
' First Folio ' may safely be attributed. Jaggard asso- 
ciated his son Isaac with the enterprise. They alone 
of the members of the syndicate were printers. Their 
three partners were publishers or booksellers only. 
Two of these, William Aspley and John Smethwick, 
had already speculated in plays of Shakespeare. Asp- 
ley had published with another in 1600 the ' Second 
Part of Henry IV and 'Much Ado about Nothing,' 
and in 1609 half of Thorpe's impression of Shake- 
speare's ' Sonnets.' Smethwick, whose shop was in 
St. Dunstan's Churchyard, Fleet Street, near Jag- 
gard's, had published in 161 1 two late editions of 
'Romeo and Juliet' and one of 'Hamlet' Edward 
Blount, the fifth partner, was an interesting figure in 
the trade, and, unlike his companions, had a true 
taste in literature. He had been a friend and ad- 
mirer of Christopher Marlowe, and had actively en- 
gaged in the posthumous publication of two of 
Marlowe's poems. He had published that curious 
collection of mystical verse entitled 'Love's Martyr,' 
one poem in which, ' a poetical essay of the Phoenix 
and the Turtle,' was signed 'William Shakespeare.' 1 
The First Folio was doubtless printed in Jaggard's 
printing office near St. Dunstan's Church. Upon 
Blount probably fell the chief labour of seeing the 

1 See p. 183. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 305 

work through the press. It was in progress through- 
out 1623, and had so far advanced by November 8, 
1623, that on that day Edward Blount and Isaac 
(son of William) Jaggard obtained formal license 
from the Stationers' Company to publish sixteen 
of the twenty hitherto imprinted plays that it was 
intended to include. The pieces, whose approaching 
publication for the first time was thus announced, 
were of supreme literary interest. The titles ran : 
1 The Tempest,' ' The Two Gentlemen,' ' Measure 
for Measure,' 'Comedy of Errors,' 'As You Like It,' 
'All's Well,' 'Twelfth Night,' 'Winter's Tale,' '3 
Henry VI,' ' Henry VIII,' ' Coriolanus,' 'Timon,' 'Julius 
Caesar,' ' Macbeth,' 'Antony and Cleopatra,' and' Cym- 
beline.' Four other hitherto imprinted dramas for 
which no license was sought figured in the volume, 
viz. ' King John,' ' 1 and 2 Henry VI,' and ' The Tam- 
ing of The Shrew ' ; but each of these plays was based 
by Shakespeare on a play of like title which had been 
published at an earlier date, and the absence of a license 
was doubtless due to an ignorant misconception on the 
part either of the Stationers' Company's officers or of 
the editors of the volume as to the true relations subsist- 
ing between the old pieces and the new. The only play 
by Shakespeare that had been previously published 
and was not included in the First Folio was ' Pericles.' 
Thirty-six pieces in all were thus brought together. 
The volume consisted of nearly one thousand double- 
column pages and was sold at a pound a copy. Steevens 
estimated that the edition numbered 250 copies. The 
book was described on the title-page as published by 



306 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Edward Blount and Isaac Jaggard, and in the colophon 
as printed at the charges of 'W. Jaggard, I. Smithweeke, 
and W. Aspley,' as well as of Blount. 1 On the title- 
page was engraved the Droeshout portrait. Com- 
mendatory verses were supplied by Ben Jonson, Hugh 
Thepref- Holland, Leonard Digges, and I. M., per- 
atory haps Jasper Maine. The dedication was 

addressed to the brothers William Herbert, 
earl of Pembroke, the lord chamberlain, and Philip 
Herbert, earl of Montgomery, and was signed by 
Shakespeare's friends and fellow-actors, Heming and 
Condell. The same signatures were appended to a 
succeeding address 'to the great variety of readers.' 
In both addresses the two actors made pretension 
to a larger responsibility for the enterprise than they 
really incurred, but their motives in identifying them- 
selves with the venture were doubtless irreproachable. 
They disclaimed (they wrote) ' ambition either of selfe- 
profit or fame in undertaking the design,' being solely 
moved by anxiety to ' keepe the memory of so worthy 
a friend and fellow alive as was our Shakespeare.' 
' It had bene a thing we confesse worthie to haue bene 
wished,' they inform the reader, ' that the author him- 
selfe had liued to haue set forth and ouerseen his 
owne writings. . . .' A list of contents follows the 
address to the readers. 

The title-page states that all the plays were printed 
'according to the true originall copies.' The dedi- 
cators wrote to the same effect. ' As where (before) 
we were abus'd with diuerse stolne and surreptitious 

1 Cf. Bibliograpkica, i. 489 seq. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 307 

copies, maimed and deformed by the frauds and 
stealthes of incurious impostors that expos'd them ; 
even those are now offer'd to your view cur'd and 
perfect in their limbes, and all the rest absolute in 
their numbers as he conceived them.' There is no 
doubt that the whole volume was printed from the 
acting versions in the possession of the manager of 
the company with which Shakespeare had been asso- 
ciated. But it is doubtful if any play were printed 
exactly as it came from his pen. The First Folio 
text is often markedly inferior to that of the six- 
The value teen pre-existent quartos, which, although 
of the text, surreptitiously and imperfectly printed, fol- 
lowed playhouse copies of far earlier date. From 
the text of the quartos the text of the First Folio differs 
invariably, although in varying degrees. The quarto 
texts of ' Love's Labour's Lost,' l Midsummer Night's 
Dream,' and 'Richard II,' for example, differ very 
largely and always for the better from the folio texts. 
On the other hand, the folio repairs the glaring de- 
fects of the quarto versions of 'The Merry Wives of 
Windsor' and of ' Henry V.' In the case of twenty 
of the plays in the First Folio no quartos exist for 
comparison, and of these twenty plays, ' Coriolanus,' 
1 All's Well,' and ' Macbeth ' present a text abounding 
in corrupt passages. 

The plays are arranged under three headings — 

The order ' Comedies,' ' Histories,' and ( Tragedies ' — 

of the and each division is separately paged. The 

arrangement of the plays in each division 

follows no principle. The comedy section begins 



308 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

with the 'Tempest' and ends with the 'Winter's 
Tale.' The histories more justifiably begin with 
; King John' and end with 'Henry VIII.' The 
tragedies begin with ' Troilus and Cressida ' and end 
with 'Cymbeline.' This order has been usually 
followed in subsequent collected editions. 

As a specimen of typography the First Folio is not 
to be commended. There are a great many con- 
Thetypog- temporary folios of larger bulk far more 
raphy. neatly and correctly printed. It looks as 
though Jaggard's printing office were undermanned. 
The misprints are numerous and are especially 
conspicuous in the pagination. The sheets seem to 
have been worked off very slowly, and corrections 
were made while the press was working, so that 
the copies struck off later differ occasionally from 
the earlier copies. One mark of carelessness on the 
part of the compositor or corrector of the press, which 
is common to all copies, is that ' Troilus and Cressida,' 
though in the body of the book it opens the section 
of tragedies, is not mentioned at all in the list of 
contents, and the play is unpaged except on its second 
and third pages, which bear the numbers 79 and 80. 

Three copies are known which are distinguished 
by more interesting irregularities, in each case unique. 
Unique The copy in the Lenox Library in New York 
copies. includes a cancel duplicate of a leaf of ' As 
You Like It ' (sheet R of the comedies), and the title- 
page bears the date 1622 instead of 1623 ; but it is 
suspected that the figures were tampered with outside 
the printing office. 1 Samuel Butler, successively head 

1 This copy was described in the Variorum Shakespeare of 1821 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 309 

master of Shrewsbury and Bishop of Lichfield and 
Coventry, possessed a copy of the First Folio in which 
a proof leaf of ' Hamlet ' was bound up with the 
corrected leaf. 1 

The most interesting irregularity yet noticed ap- 
pears in one of the two copies of the book belonging 
to the Baroness Burdett-Coutts. This copy is known 
as the Sheldon Folio, having formed in the seven- 
teenth century part of the library of Ralph Sheldon 
of Weston Manor in the parish of Long Compton, 
Warwickshire. 2 In the Sheldon Folio the opening 
The P a g e °f ' Troilus and Cressida,' of which the 

Sheldon recto or front is occupied by the prologue 
copy ' and the verso or back by the opening lines 

of the text of the play, is followed by a superfluous 
leaf. On the recto or front of the unnecessary leaf 3 
are printed the concluding lines of ' Romeo and Juliet ' 
in place of the prologue to 'Troilus and Cressida.' 
At the back or verso are the opening lines of ' Troi- 
lus and Cressida ' repeated from the preceding page. 

(xxi/449) as in the possession of Messrs. J. and A. Arch, booksellers, of 
Cornhill. It was subsequently sold at Sotheby's in 1855 for 163/. 16s. 

1 I cannot trace the present whereabouts of this copy, but it is 
described in the Variorw?i Shakespeare of 1 82 1, xxi. 449-50. 

2 The copy seems to have been purchased by a member of the 
Sheldon family in 1628, five years after publication. There is a note 
in a contemporary hand which says it was bought for 3/. i$s., a 
somewhat extravagant price. The entry further says that it cost three 
score pounds of silver, words that I cannot explain. The Sheldon 
family arms are on the sides of the volume, and there are many 
manuscript notes in the margin, interpreting difficult words, correcting 
misprints, or suggesting new readings. 

3 It has been mutilated by a former owner, and the signature of the 
leaf is missing, but it was presumably G g 3. 



310 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

The presence of a different ornamental headpiece on 
each page proves that the two are not taken from the 
same setting of the type. At a later page in the Shel- 
don copy the concluding lines of ' Romeo and Juliet ' 
are duly reprinted at the close of the play, and on the 
verso or back of the leaf, which supplies them in their 
right place, is the opening passage, as in other copies, 
of 'Timon of Athens.' These curious confusions 
attest that while the work was in course of composi- 
tion the printers or editors of the volume at one time 
intended to place 'Troilus and Cressida,' with the 
prologue omitted, after ' Romeo and Juliet.' The last 
page of ' Romeo and Juliet ' is in all copies numbered 
79, an obvious misprint for 77; the first leaf of 
' Troilus ' is paged 78 ; the second and third pages of 
1 Troilus ' are numbered 79 and 80. It was doubtless 
suddenly determined while the volume was in the 
press to transfer ' Troilus and Cressida ' to the head of 
the tragedies from a place near the end, but the num- 
bers on the opening pages which indicated its first 
position were clumsily retained, and to avoid the ex- 
tensive typographical corrections that were required 
by the play's change of position, its remaining pages 
were allowed to go forth unnumbered. 1 

It is difficult to estimate how many copies survive 
of the First Folio, which is intrinsically and extrinsi- 
cally the most valuable volume in the whole range 

1 Correspondents inform me that two copies of the First Folio, one 
formerly belonging to Leonard Hartley and the other to Bishop Virtue 
of Portsmouth, showed a somewhat similar irregularity. Both copies 
were bought by American booksellers, and I have not been able to 
trace them. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 3 1 1 

of English literature. It seems that about 140 copies 
Estimated have been traced within the past century. 

extent" ^ ° f theSe feWer than twent y are in a P er " 

copies. feet state, that is, with the portrait printed 
{not iitlaid) on the title-page, and the flyleaf facing 
it, with all the pages succeeding it, intact and 
uninjured. (The flyleaf contains Ben Jonson's 
verses, attesting the truthfulness of the portrait.) 
Excellent copies in this enviable state are in the 
Grenville Library at the British Museum, and in 
the libraries of the Duke of Devonshire, the Earl of 
Crawford, the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, and Mr. A. H. 
Huth. Of these probably the finest and cleanest is 
the ' Daniel ' copy belonging to the Baroness Burdett- 
Coutts. It measures 13 inches by 8^, and was pur- 
chased by its present owner for 716/. 2s. at the sale 
of George Daniel's library in 1864. Some twenty 
more copies are defective in the preliminary pages, 
but are unimpaired in other respects. There remain 
about a hundred copies which have sustained serious 
damage at various points. 

A reprint of the First Folio unwarrantably pur- 
porting to be exact was published in 1 807-8. a The 

. t f best reprint was issued in three parts by 
the First Lionel Booth in 1861, 1863, and 1864. The 
valuable photo-zincographic reproduction 
undertaken by Sir Henry James, under the direction 
of Howard Staunton, was issued in sixteen folio parts 
between February 1864 and October 1865. A reduced 

1 Cf. Notes and Queries, 1st ser., vii. 47. 



312 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

photographic facsimile, too small to be legible, appeared 
in 1876, with a preface by Halliwell-Phillipps. 

The Second Folio edition was printed in 1632 by 
Thomas Cotes for Robert Allot and William Aspley, 
each of whose names figures as publisher on different 
The copies. To Allot Blount had transferred, on 

Second November 16, 1630, his rights in the sixteen 
plays which were first licensed for publica- 
tion in 1623. 1 The Second Folio was reprinted from 
the First ; a few corrections were made in the 
text, but most of the changes were arbitrary and 
needless. Charles I's copy is at Windsor, and 
Charles II's at the British Museum. The ' Perkins 
Folio,' now in the Duke of Devonshire's possession, 
in which John Payne Collier introduced forged emen- 
dations, was a copy of that of 1 632.2 The Third 
Folio — for the most part a faithful reprint of the 
The Third Second — was first published in 1 663 by Peter 
Folio Chetwynde, who reissued it next year with 

the addition of seven plays, six of which have no 

1 Arber, Stationers' Registers, iii. 242-3. 

2 On January 31, 1852, Collier announced in the Athemzum, that 
this copy, which had been purchased by him for thirty shillings, and 
bore on the outer cover the words ' Tho. Perkins his Booke? was anno- 
tated throughout by a former owner in the middle of the seventeenth 
century. Shortly afterwards Collier published all the ' essential ' manu- 
script readings in a volume entitled Notes and Emendations to the Plays 
of Shakespeare. Next year he presented the folio to the Duke of 
Devonshire. A warm controversy as to the date and genuineness of 
the corrections followed, but in 1859 all doubt as to their origin was set 
at rest by Mr. N. E. S. A. Hamilton of the manuscript department of 
the British Museum, who in letters to the Times of July 2 and 16 pro- 
nounced all the manuscript notes to be recent fabrications in a simu- 
lated seventeenth-centurv hand. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 3 1 3 

claim to admission among Shakespeare's works. 
' Unto this impression,' runs the title-page of 1664, 
' is added seven Playes never before printed in folio, 
viz. : Pericles, Prince of Tyre. The London Prodi- 
gall. The History of Thomas Ld. Cromwell. Sir 
John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham. The Puritan Widow. 
A Yorkshire Tragedy. The Tragedy of Locrine.' 
The six spurious pieces which open the volume were 
attributed by unprincipled publishers to Shakespeare 
in his lifetime. Fewer copies of the Third Folio are 
reputed to be extant than of the Second or Fourth 
owing to the destruction of many unsold impressions 
The Fourth in the Fire of London in 1666. The Fourth 
Foho. Folio, printed in 1685 'for H. Herringman, 

E. Brewster, R. Chiswell, and R. Bentley,' reprints the 
folio of 1664 without change except in the way of 
modernising the spelling ; it repeats the spurious 
pieces. 

Since 1685 some two hundred independent 
editions of the collected works have been published 
Eigh- in Great Britain and Ireland, and many 
century thousand editions of separate plays. The 
editors. eighteenth-century editors of the collected 
works endeavoured with varying degrees of success 
to purge the text of the numerous incoherences 
of the folios, and to restore, where good taste or 
good sense required it, the lost text of the contem- 
porary quartos. It is largely owing to a due co-ordi- 
nation of the results of the efforts of the eighteenth- 
century editors by their successors in the present 
century that Shakespeare's work has become intelli- 



314 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

gible to general readers unversed in textual criticism, 
and has won from them the veneration that it merits. 1 
Nicholas Rowe, a popular dramatist of Queen 
Anne's reign, and poet laureate to George I, was the 
first critical editor of Shakespeare. He produced an 
edition of his plays in six octavo volumes in 1709. 
Nicholas ^ new ecn tion in eight volumes followed in 
Rowe, 1 714, and another hand added a ninth 

1 74-171 • vomme which included the poems. Rowe 
prefixed a valuable life of the poet embodying 
traditions which were in danger of perishing without 
a record. His text followed that of the Fourth Folio. 
The plays were printed in the same order except 
that he transferred the spurious pieces from the 
beginning to the end. Rowe did not compare his 
text with that of the First Folio or of the quartos, 
but in the case of ' Romeo and Juliet ' he met with an 
early quarto while his edition was passing through 
the press, and inserted at the end of the play the pro- 
logue which is only met with in the quartos. He 
made a few happy emendations, some of which 
coincide accidentally with the readings of the First 
Folio ; but his text is deformed by many palpable 
errors. His practical experience as a playwright 
induced him, however, to prefix for the first time a list 
of dramatis pers once to each play, to divide and number 
acts and scenes on rational principles, and to mark the 

1 The best account of eighteenth-century criticism of Shakespeare 
is to be found in the preface to the Cambridge edition by Mr. Aldis 
Wright. The memoirs of the various editors in the Dictionary of 
A T ational Biography supply useful information. I have made liberal 
use of these sources in the sketch given in the following pages. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 3 1 5 

entrances and exits of the characters. Spelling, punct- 
uation, and grammar he corrected and modernised. 

The poet Pope was Shakespeare's second editor. 

His edition in six quarto volumes was completed in 

1725. The poems, edited by Dr. George 

Pope, Sewell, with an essay on the rise and prog- 

1688-1744. resg Q £ t j ie sta g e> anc [ a glossary, appeared 

in a seventh volume. Pope had few qualifications 
for the task, and the venture was a commercial 
failure. In his preface Pope, while he fully rec- 
ognised Shakespeare's native genius, deemed his 
achievement deficient in artistic quality. Pope 
claimed to have collated the text of the Fourth Folio 
with that of all preceding editions, and although his 
work indicates that he had access to the First Folio 
and some of the quartos, it is clear that his text 
was based on that of Rowe. His innovations are 
numerous, and are derived from ' his private sense 
and conjecture,' but they are often plausible and 
ingenious. He was the first to indicate the place of 
each new scene, and he improved on Rowe's subdivi- 
sion of the scenes. A second edition of Pope's version 
in ten duodecimo volumes appeared in 1728 with 
Sewell's name on the title-page as well as Pope's. 
There were few alterations in the text, though a pre- 
liminary table supplied a list of twenty-eight quartos. 
Other editions followed in 1735 and 1768. The last 
was printed at Garrick's suggestion at Birmingham 
from Baskerville's types. 

Pope found a rigorous critic in Lewis Theobald, who 
although contemptible as a writer of original verse and 



3 16 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

prose proved himself the most inspired of all thetext- 
Lewis ual critics of Shakespeare. Pope savagely 

Theobald, avenged himself on his censor by holding him 
~ 1744 ' up to ridicule as the hero of the ' Dunciad.' 
Theobald first displayed his critical skill in 1726 in a 
volume which deserves to rank as a classic in English 
literature. The title runs ' Shakespeare Restored, or 
a specimen of the many errors as well committed as 
unamended by Mr. Pope in his late edition of this 
poet, designed not only to correct the said edition but 
to restore the true reading of Shakespeare in all the 
editions ever yet publish'd.' There at page 137 ap- 
pears Theobald's great emendation in Shakespeare's 
account of Falstaffs death (Henry V, 11. hi. 17): 
' His nose was as sharp as a pen and a' babbled of 
green fields,' in place of the reading in the old copies, 
' His nose was as sharp as a pen and a table of 
green fields.' In 1733 Theobald brought out his 
edition of Shakespeare in seven volumes. In 1740 it 
reached a second issue. A third edition was published 
in 1752. Others are dated 1772 and 1773. It is 
stated that 12,860 copies in all were sold. Theobald 
made the First Folio the basis of his text, although he 
failed to adopt all the correct readings of that version, 
but over 300 corrections or emendations which he 
made in his edition have become part and parcel of 
the authorised canon. Theobald's principles of text- 
ual criticism were as enlightened as his practice was 
triumphant. ' I ever labour,' he wrote to Warburton, 
' to make the smallest deviation that I possibly can 
from the text ; never to alter at all where I can by 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 317 

any means explain a passage with sense ; nor ever 
by any emendation to make the author better when it 
is probable the text came from his own hands.' 
Theobald has every right to the title of the Porson of 
Shakespearean criticism. 1 The following are favour- 
able specimens of his insight. In ' Macbeth ' (1. vii. 6) 
for ' this bank and school of time,' he substituted 
the familiar 'bank and shoal of time.' In 'Antony 
and Cleopatra ' the old copies (v. ii. 87) made 
Cleopatra say of Antony : 

For his bounty, 
There was no winter in 't; an Anthony it was 
That grew the more by reaping. 

For the gibberish ' an Anthony it was,' Theobald read 
' an autumn 'twas,' and thus gave the lines true point 
and poetry. A third notable instance, somewhat 
more recondite, is found in ' Coriolanus ' (11. i. 59-60) 
where Menenius asks the tribunes in the First Folio 
version 'What harm can your besom conspectuities 
[i.e. vision or eyes] glean out of this character ? ' 
Theobald replaced the meaningless epithet 'besom' 
by ' bisson ' {i.e. purblind), a recognised Elizabethan 
word which Shakespeare had already employed in 
' Hamlet' (11. ii. 529). 2 

1 Mr. Churton Collins's admirable essay on Theobald's textual 
criticism of Shakespeare entitled ' The Porson of Shakespearean Critics,' 
is reprinted from the Quarterly Review in his Essays and Studies, 

1895, PP- 26 3 se q- 

2 Collier doubtless followed Theobald's hint when he pretended to 
have found in his ' Perkins Folio ' the extremely happy emendation (now 
generally adopted) of ' bisson multitude ' for ' bosom multiplied ' in 
Coriolanus's speech : 

How shall this bisson multitude digest 

The senate's courtesy? — {Coriolanus, in. i. 131-2.) 



3l8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

The fourth editor was Sir Thomas Hanmer, a 
country gentleman without much literary culture, but 
sir possessing a large measure of mother wit. 

Hanmer He was s P ea ker in the House of Commons 
1677-1746. for a few months in 1714, and retiring soon 
afterwards from public life devoted his leisure to a 
thoroughgoing scrutiny of Shakespeare's plays. His 
edition, which was the earliest to pretend to typo- 
graphical beauty, was printed at the Oxford University 
Press in 1744 in six quarto volumes. It contained a 
number of good engravings by Gravelot after designs by 
Francis Hayman, and was long highly valued by book 
collectors. No editor's name was given. In forming 
his text, Hanmer depended exclusively on his own 
ingenuity. He made no recourse to the old copies. 
The result was a mass of common sense emendations, 
some of which have been permanently accepted. 1 
Hanmer's edition was reprinted in 1 770-1. 

In 1747 Bishop Warburton produced a revised 
version of Pope's edition in eight volumes. Warbur- 
Bishop ton was hardly better qualified for the task 
40^1608- tnan Pope, and such improvements as he 
1779- introduced are mainly borrowed from 

Theobald and Hanmer. On both these critics he 
arrogantly and unjustly heaped abuse in his preface. 
The Bishop was consequently criticised with appro- 



1 A happy example of his shrewdness may be quoted from King 
Lear, III. vi. 72, where in all previous editions Edgar's enumeration of 
various kinds of dogs included the line ' Hound or spaniel brach or 
hym [or him].' For the last word Hanmer substituted 'lym,' which 
was the Elizabethan svnonvm for bloodhound. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 319 

priate severity for his pretentious incompetence by 
many writers ; among them, by Thomas Edwards, 
whose ' Supplement to Warburton's Edition of Shake- 
speare' first appeared in 1747, and, having been re- 
named ' The Canons of Criticism ' next year in the 
third edition, passed through as many as seven 
editions by 1765. 

Dr. Johnson, the sixth editor, completed his edition 
in eight volumes in 1765, and a second issue followed 
Dr Tohn three years later. Although he made some 
son, 1709- independent collation of the quartos, his 
3 ' textual labours were slight, and his verbal 

notes show little close knowledge of sixteenth and 
seventeenth century literature. But in his preface 
and elsewhere he displays a genuine, if occasionally 
sluggish, sense of Shakespeare's greatness, and his 
massive sagacity enabled him to indicate convincingly 
Shakespeare's triumphs of characterisation. 

The seventh editor, Edward Capell, advanced on 
his predecessors in many respects. He was a clumsy 
Edward writer, and Johnson declared, with some 
Capeii, justice, that he 'gabbled monstrously,' but 
1713-81. hj s C ollation of the quartos and the First and 
Second Folios was conducted on more thorough and 
scholarly methods than any of his predecessors, not 
excepting Theobald. His industry was untiring, and 
he is said to have transcribed the whole of Shake- 
speare ten times. Capell's edition appeared in ten 
small octavo volumes in 1768. He showed himself 
well versed in Elizabethan literature in a volume of 
notes which appeared in 1774, and in three further 



320 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

volumes, entitled ' Notes, Various Readings, and the 
School of Shakespeare,' which were not published till 
1783, two years after his death. The last volume, 
1 The School of Shakespeare,' consisted of ' authentic 
extracts from divers English books that were in print 
in that author's time,' to which was appended 'Notitia 
Dramatica ; or, Tables of Ancient Plays (from their 
beginning to the Restoration of Charles II).' 

George Steevens, whose saturnine humour involved 

him in a lifelong series of literary quarrels with rival 

students of Shakespeare, made invaluable 

George r 

Steevens, contributions to Shakespearean study. In 
173 - 1 °°- !^55 ne reprinted twenty of the plays from 
the quartos. Soon afterwards he revised Johnson's 
edition without much assistance from the Doctor, 
and his revision, which embodied numerous improve- 
ments, appeared in ten volumes in 1773. It was long 
regarded as the standard version. Steevens's anti- 
quarian knowledge alike of Elizabethan history and 
literature was greater than that of any previous 
editor ; his citations of parallel passages from the 
writings of Shakespeare's contemporaries, in elucida- 
tion of obscure words and phrases, have not been ex- 
ceeded in number or excelled in aptness by any of his 
successors. All commentators of recent times are more 
deeply indebted in this department of their labours 
to Steevens than to any other critic. But he lacked 
taste as well as temper, and excluded from his edition 
Shakespeare's sonnets and poems, because, he wrote, 
'the strongest Act of Parliament that could be framed 
would fail to compel readers into their service.' 1 

1 Edition of 1793, vol. i. p. 7. 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 32 1 

The second edition of Johnson and Steevens's ver- 
sion appeared in ten volumes in 1778. The third 
edition, published in ten volumes in 1785, was re- 
vised by Steevens's friend, Isaac Reed ( 1742-1807), a 
scholar of his own type. The fourth and last edition 
published in Steevens's lifetime was prepared bv 
himself in fifteen volumes in 1793. As he grew 
older, he made some reckless changes in the text, 
chiefly with the unhallowed object of mystifying 
those engaged in the same field. With a malignity 
that was not without humour, he supplied, too, many 
obscene notes to coarse expressions, and he pretended 
that he owed his indecencies to one or other of two 
highly respectable clergymen, Richard Amner and 
John Collins, whose surnames were in each instance 
appended. He had known and quarrelled with both. 
Such proofs of his perversity justified the title which 
Gifford applied to him of ' the Puck of Commen- 
tators.' 

Edmund Malone, who lacked Steevens's quick wit 
and incisive style, was a laborious and amiable archae- 
Edmund ologist, without much ear for poetry or deli- 
Maione, cate literary taste. He threw abundance of 
new light on Shakespeare's biography, and 
on the chronology and sources of his works, while 
his researches into the beginnings of the English 
stage added a new chapter of first-rate importance to 
English literary history. To Malone is due the first 
rational ' attempt to ascertain the order in which the 
plays attributed to Shakespeare were written.' His 
earliest results on the topic were contributed to 

Y 



322 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Steevens's edition of 1778. Two years later he 
published, as a supplement to Steevens's work, two 
volumes containing a history of the Elizabethan stage, 
with reprints of Arthur Brooke's 'Romeus and Juliet,' 
Shakespeare's Poems, and the plays falsely ascribed 
to him in the Third and Fourth Folios. A quarrel 
with Steevens followed, and was never closed. In 
1787 Malone issued 'A Dissertation on the Three 
Parts of King Henry VI,' tending to show that those 
plays were not originally written by Shakespeare. 
In 1790 appeared his edition of Shakespeare in ten 
volumes, the first in two parts. 

What is known among booksellers as the ' First 
Variorum ' edition of Shakespeare was prepared by 
Variorum Steevens's friend, Isaac Reed,af ter Steevens's 
editions. death. It was based on a copy of Steevens's 
work of 1793, which had been enriched with numerous 
manuscript additions, and it embodied the published 
notes and prefaces of preceding editors. It was pub- 
lished in twenty-one volumes in 1803. The 'Second 
Variorum ' edition, which was mainly a reprint of the 
first, was published in twenty-one volumes in 18 13. 
The 'Third Variorum ' was prepared for the press by 
James Boswell the younger, the son of Dr. Johnson's 
biographer. It was based on Malone's edition of 1790, 
but included massive accumulations of notes left in 
manuscript by Malone at his death. Malone had 
been long engaged on a revision of his edition, but 
died in 181 2, before it was completed. Boswell's 
' Malone,' as the new work is often called, appeared 
in twenty-one volumes in 182 1, It is the most valu- 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 323 

able of all collected editions of Shakespeare's works, 
but the three volumes of preliminary essays on Shake- 
speare's biography and writings, and the illustrative 
notes brought together in the final volume, are con- 
fusedly arranged and are unindexed ; many of the 
essays and notes break off abruptly at the point at 
which they were left at Malone's death. A new 
'Variorum' edition, on an exhaustive scale, was under- 
taken by Mr. H. Howard Furness of Philadelphia, and 
eleven volumes have appeared since 1871 ('Romeo 
and Juliet,' 'Macbeth,' 'Hamlet,' 2 vols., 'King Lear,' 
'Othello,' 'Merchant of Venice,' 'As You Like It,' 
'Tempest,' 'Midsummer Night's Dream,' and 'Win- 
ter's Tale '). 

Of nineteenth-century editors who have prepared 
collective editions of Shakespeare's work with original 
Nine- annotations those who have most successfully 

century pursued the great traditions of the eigh- 
editors. teenth century are Alexander Dyce, Howard 
Staunton, Nikolaus Delius, and the Cambridge editors 
William George Clark (1821-78) and Dr. Aldis 
Wright. 

Alexander Dyce was almost as well read as 
Steevens in Elizabethan literature, and especially in 
Alexander ^ e drama of the period, and his edition of 
Dyce, Shakespeare in nine volumes, which was 

9 " first published in 1857, has many new and 
valuable illustrative notes and a few good textual 
emendations, as well as a useful glossary ; but Dyce's 
annotations are not always adequate, and often tan- 
talise the reader by their brevity. Howard Staunton's 



324 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

edition first appeared in three volumes between 1868 
Howard and l &7°- He also was well read in con- 
staunton, temporary literature and was an acute text- 
ual critic. His introductions bring together 
much interesting stage history. Nikolaus Delius's 
Nikoiaus edition was issued at Elberfeld in seven vol- 
Deiius, umes between 1854 and 1 86 1. Delius's text 
I3 ~ is formed on sound critical principles and is to 

be trusted thoroughly. A fifth edition in two volumes 
appeared in 1882. The Cambridge edition, which 
The Cam- first appeared in nine volumes between 1863 
edition and 1866, exhaustively notes the textual 
1863-6. variations of all preceding editions, and 
supplies the best and fullest apparatus criticus. (Of 
new editions, one dated 1887 is also in nine volumes, 
and another, dated 1893, in forty volumes.) 

Other editors of the complete works of Shake- 
speare of the nineteenth century, whose labours, 
although of some value, present fewer distinctive char- 
acteristics are: William Harness (1825, 8 vols.); 
Samuel Weller Singer (1826, 10 vols., printed at the 
other Chiswick Press for William Pickering, illus- 

centoy" 111 " trated h Y Stothard and others; reissued in 
editions. 1 856 with essays by William Watkiss 
Lloyd); Charles Knight, with discursive notes and 
pictorial illustrations by F. W. Fairholt and others 
(* Pictorial edition,' 8 vols., including biography 
and the doubtful plays, 1838-43, often reissued 
under different designations); Bryan Waller Procter, 
i.e. Barry Cornwall (1839-43, 3 vols.); John 
Payne Collier (184 1-4, 8 vols. ; another edition, 



BIBLIOGRAPHY 325 

8 vols., privately printed, 1878, 4to); Samuel 
Phelps, the actor (1852-4, 2 vols. ; another edition, 
1882-4); J- O. Halliwell (1853-61, 15 vols, folio, with 
an encyclopaedic collection of annotations of earlier 
editors and pictorial illustrations); Richard Grant 
White (Boston, U.S.A., 1857-65, 12 vols.); W. J. 
Rolfe (New York, 1871-96, 40 vols.); the Rev. 
H. N. Hudson (the Harvard edition, Boston, 1881, 
20 vols.). The latest complete annotated editions 
published in this country are, 'The Henry Irving 
Shakespeare,' edited by F. A. Marshall and others — 
especially useful for notes on stage history (8 vols. 
1 888-90) — and ' The Temple Shakespeare,' concisely 
edited by Mr. Israel Gollancz(38 vols. i2mo, 1894-6). 
Of one-volume editions of the unannotated text, 
the best are the Globe, edited by W. G. Clark and 
Dr. Aldis Wright (1864, and constantly reprinted — 
since 1891 with a new and useful glossary); the 
Leopold (1876, from the text of Delius, with preface 
by Dr. Furnivall); and the Oxford, edited by Mr. 
W.J. Craig (1894). 



326 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



XX 

POS 1 'HUMO US REPUTA TION 

Shakespeare defied at every stage in his career the 
laws of the classical drama. He rode roughshod 
over the unities of time, place, and action. There 
were critics in his day who zealously championed the 
ancient rules, and viewed with distrust any infringe- 
ment of them. Bat the force of Shakespeare's 
genius — its revelation of new methods of dramatic 
art — was not lost on the lovers of the ancient ways ; 
and even those who, to assuage their consciences, 
entered a formal protest against his innovations, 
soon swelled the chorus of praise with which his 
work was welcomed by contemporary playgoers, 
cultured and uncultured alike. ■ The unauthorised 
publishers of ' Troilus and Cressida ' in 1608 faith- 
fully echoed public opinion when they prefaced to 
the work the note : ' This author's comedies are so 
framed to the life that they serve for the most com- 
mon commentaries of all actions of our lives, showing 
such a dexterity and power of wit that the most dis- 
pleased with plays are pleased with his comedies. . . . 
So much and such savoured salt of wit is in his 
comedies that they seem for their height of pleasure 
to be born in the sea that brought forth Venus.' 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 327 

Anticipating the final verdict, the editors of the 
First Folio wrote, seven years after Shakespeare's 
death : ' These plays have had their trial already and 
stood out all appeals.' 1 Ben Jonson, the staunch- 
est champion of classical canons, noted that Shake- 
D T speare 'wanted art,' but he allowed him, 

Ben Jon- r ' ' 

son's tri- in verses prefixed to the First Folio, the 
first place among all dramatists, includ- 
ing those of Greece and Rome, and claimed that all 
Europe owed him homage : 

Triumph, my Briton, thou hast one to show, 
To whom all scenes of Europe homage owe. 
He was not of an age, but for all time. 

In 1630 Milton penned in like strains an epitaph on 
1 the great heir of fame ' : 

What needs my Shakespeare for his honoured bones 

The labour of an age in piled stones? 

Or that his hollowed reliques should be hid 

Under a star-y-pointing pyramid ? 

Dear son of memory, great heir of fame, 

What need'st thou such weak witness of thy name? 

Thou in our wonder and astonishment 

Hast built thyself a lifelong monument. 

A writer of fine insight who veiled himself un- 
der the initials I. M. S. 2 contributed to the Second 

1 Cf. the opening line of Matthew Arnold's Sonnet on Shake- 
speare : 

Others abide our question. Thou art free. 

2 These letters have been interpreted as standing for the inscription 
' In Memoriam Scriptoris ' as well as for the name of the writer. In the 
latter connection, they have been variously and inconclusively read as 
Jasper Mayne (Student), a young Oxford writer; as John Marston 
(Student or Satirist); and as John Milton (Senior or Student). 



328 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Folio of 1632 a splendid eulogy. The opening lines 
declare ' Shakespeare's freehold ' to have been : 

A mind reflecting ages past, whose clear 
And equal surface can make things appear 
Distant a thousand years, and represent 
Them in their lively colours' just extent. 

It was his faculty 

To outrun hasty time, retrieve the fates, 
Roll back the heavens, blow ope the iron gates 
Of death and Lethe, where (confused) lie 
Great heaps of ruinous mortality. 

Milton and I. M. S. were followed within ten years 
by critics of tastes so varied as the dramatist of do- 
mesticity Thomas Heywood, the gallant lyrist Sir 
John Suckling, the philosophic and 'ever-memorable' 
John Hales of Eton, and the untiring versifier of the 
stage and court, Sir William D'Avenant. Before 1640 
Hales is said to have triumphantly established, in a 
public dispute held with men of learning in his rooms 
at Eton, the proposition that 'there was no subject 
of which any poet ever writ but he could produce it 
much better done in Shakespeare.' 1 Leonard Digges 

1 Charles Gildon, in 1694, in 'Some Reflections on Mr. Rymer's 
Short View of Tragedy,' which he addressed to Dryden, gives the 
classical version of this incident. ' To give the world,' Gildon informs 
Dryden, l some satisfaction that Shakespear has had as great a Venera- 
tion paid his Excellence by men of unquestion'd parts as this I now 
express of him, I shall give some account of what I have heard from 
your Mouth, Sir, about the noble Triumph he gain'd over all the 
Ancients by the Judgment of the ablest Critics of that time. The 
Matter of Fact (if my Memory fail me not) was this. Mr. Hales of Eaton 
affirm'd that he wou'd shew all the Poets of Antiquity outdone by 
Shakespear, in all the Topics, and common places made use of in Poetry. 
The Enemies of Shakespear wou'd by no means yield him so much 
Excellence : so that it came to a Resolution of a trial of skill upon that 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 329 

(in the 1640 edition of the 'Poems') asserted that 

every revival of Shakespeare's plays drew crowds 

to pit, boxes, and galleries alike. At a little later date, 

Shakespeare's plays were the ' closet companions ' of 

Charles I's 'solitudes.' 1 

After the Restoration public taste in England 

veered towards the French and classical dramatic 

models. 2 Shakespeare's work was subjected to some 

unfavourable criticism as the product of 
1660- 1702. . 

nature to the exclusion of art, but the eclipse 

proved more partial and temporary than is commonly 

admitted. The pedantic censure of Thomas Rymer 

on the score of Shakespeare's indifference to the 

classical canons attracted attention, but awoke in 

England no substantial echo. In his 'Short View of 

Tragedy' (1692) Rymer mainly concentrated his 

attention on ' Othello,' and reached the eccentric 

conclusion that it was ' a bloody farce without salt or 

savour.' In Pepys's eyes 'The Tempest' had 'no 

great wit,' and ' Midsummer Night's Dream ' was 

' the most insipid and ridiculous play ; yet this 

Subject; the place agreed on for the Dispute was Mr. Hales's Chamber 
at Eaton; a great many Books were sent down by the Enemies of 
this Poet, and on the appointed day my Lord Falkland, Sir John 
Suckling, and all the Persons of Quality that had Wit and Learning, 
and interested themselves in the Quarrel, met there, and upon a thorough 
Disquisition of the point, the Judges chose by agreement out of this 
Learned and Ingenious Assembly unanimously gave the Preference to 
Shakespear. And the Greek and Roman Poets were adjudg'd to 
Vail at least their Glory in that of the English Hero.' 

1 Milton, Iconoclastes, 1690, pp. 9-10. 

2 Cf. Evelyn's Diary, November 26, 1 66 1 : ' I saw Hamlet, Prince 
of Denmark, played, but now the old plays began to disgust the refined 
age, since His Majesty's being so long abroad.' 



330 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

exacting critic witnessed thirty-six performances of 
twelve of Shakespeare's plays between October n, 
1660, and February 6, 1668-9, seeing ' Hamlet ' 
four times, and ' Macbeth,' which he admitted to be 
' a most excellent play for variety,' nine times. 
Dryden's Dryden, the literary dictator of the day, 
view. repeatedly complained of Shakespeare's in- 

equalities — 'he is the very Janus of poets.' 1 But in 
almost the same breath Dryden declared that Shake- 
speare was held in as much veneration among English- 
men as yEschylus among the Athenians, and that ' he 
was the man who of all modern and perhaps ancient 
poets had the largest and most comprehensive soul. . . . 
When he describes anything, you more than see it — 
you feel it too.' 2 In 1693,, when Sir Godfrey Kneller 
presented Dryden with a copy of the Chandos portrait 
of Shakespeare, the poet acknowledged the gift thus : 

TO SIR GODFREY KNELLER 

Shakespear, thy Gift, I place before my sight; 
With awe, I ask his Blessing 'ere I write; 
With Reverence look on his Majestick Face; 
Proud to be less, but of his Godlike Race. 
His Soul Inspires me, while thy Praise I write, 
And I, like Teucer, under Ajax fight. 

Writers of Charles II's reign of such opposite 
temperaments as Margaret Cavendish, duchess of 

1 Conquest of Granada, 1672. 

2 Essay on Dramatic Poesze, 1668. Some interesting, if more 
qualified, criticism by Dryden also appears in his preface to an adapta- 
tion of 'Troilus and Cressida ' in 1679. In the prologue to his and 
D'Avenant's adaptation of 'The Tempest ' in 1676, he wrote : 

But Shakespeare's magic could not copied be; 
Within that circle none durst walk but he. 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 33 I 

Newcastle, and Sir Charles Sedley vigorously argued 
for Shakespeare's supremacy. As a girl the sober 
duchess declares she fell in love with Shakespeare. In 
her 'Sociable Letters,' which were published in 1664, 
she enthusiastically, if diffusely, described how Shake- 
speare creates the illusion that he had been ' trans- 
formed into every one of those persons he hath 
described,' and suffered all their emotions. When 
she witnessed one of his tragedies she felt persuaded 
that she was witnessing an episode in real life. 
' Indeed,' she concludes, ' Shakespeare had a clear 
judgment, a quick wit, a subtle observation, a deep 
apprehension, and a most eloquent elocution.' The 
profligate Sedley, in a prologue to the 'Wary Widdow,' 
a comedy by one Higden, produced in 1693, apostro- 
phised Shakespeare thus : 

Shackspear whose fruitfull Genius, happy wit 
Was fram'd and finisht at a lucky hit 
The pride of Nature, and the shame of Schools, 
Born to Create, and not to Learn from Rules. 

Many adaptations of Shakespeare's plays were 
contrived to meet current sentiment of a less admirable 
type. But they failed efficiently to supersede the 
originals. Dryden and D'Avenant converted ' The 
Tempest ' into an opera (1670). D'Avenant single- 
handed adapted 'The Two Noble Kinsmen' (1668) and 
Restora- 'Macbeth' (1674). Dryden dealt similarly 
tionadap- with ' Troilus ' (1679); Thomas Duffett with 
'The Tempest' (1675); Shad well with 
'Timon ' (1678); Nahum Tate with 'Richard II' 
( 1 68 1 ), ' Lear' (1681), and 'Coriolanus' (1682); John 



332 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Crowne with 'Henry VI' (1681); D'Urfey with 'Cym- 
beline ' (1682); Ravenscoft with ' Titus Andronicus ' 
(1687); Otway with ' Romeo and Juliet ' (1692), and 
John Sheffield, duke of Buckingham, with ' Julius 
Caesar ' (1692). But during the same period the chief 
actor of the day, Thomas Betterton, won his spurs as 
the interpreter of Shakespeare's leading parts, often 
in unrevised versions. Hamlet was accounted that 
actor's masterpiece. 1 ' No succeeding tragedy for 
several years,' wrote Downes, the prompter at Better- 
ton's theatre, ' got more reputation or money to the 
company than this.' 

From the accession of Queen Anne to the present 
day the tide of Shakespeare's reputation, both on the 
From 1702 stage and among critics, has flowed onward 
onwards. almost uninterruptedly. The censorious 
critic, John Dennis, in his 'Letters' on Shakespeare's 
'genius,' gave his work in 171 1 whole-hearted com- 
mendation ; and two of the greatest men of letters of 
the eighteenth century, Pope and Johnson, although 
they did not withhold all censure, paid him, as we have 
seen, the homage of becoming his editor. The school 
of textual criticism which Theobald and Capell founded 
in the middle years of the century has never ceased 
its activity since their day. 2 Edmund Malone's devo- 
tion at the end of the eighteenth century to the biog- 



1 Cf. Shakspere's Century of Praise, 1591-1693, New Shakspere 
Society, ed. Ingleby and Toulmin Smith, 1879; and Fresh Allusions, 
ed. Furnivall, 1886. 

2 Cf. W. Sidney Walker, Critical Examination of the Text of 
Shakespeare, 1859. 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 333 

raphy of the poet and the contemporary history of 
the stage secured for him a vast band of disciples, of 
whom Joseph Hunter and John Payne Collier well 
deserve mention. But of all Malone's successors, James 
Orchard Halliwell, afterwards Halliwell-Phillipps 
(1820-89), has made the most important additions 
to our knowledge of Shakespeare's biography. 

Meanwhile, at the beginning of the nineteenth 
century, there arose a third school to expound exclu- 
sively the aesthetic excellence of the plays. In its in- 
ception the aesthetic school owed much to the methods 
of Schlegel and other admiring critics of Shakespeare 
in Germany. But Coleridge in his ' Notes and Lect- 
ures ' 1 and Hazlitt in his ' Characters of Shake- 
speare's Plays' (18 1 7) are the best representatives 
of the aesthetic school in this or any other country. 
Although Professor Dowden, in his 'Shakespeare, his 
Mind and Art' (1874), and Mr. Swinburne in his ' Study 
of Shakespeare '(1880), are worthy followers, Coleridge 
and Hazlitt remain as aesthetic critics unsurpassed. In 
the effort to supply a fuller interpretation of Shake- 
speare's works — textual, historical, and aesthetic — two 
publishing societies have done much valuable work. 
'The Shakespeare Society' was founded in 1841 by 
Collier, Halliwell, and their friends, and published 
some forty-eight volumes before its dissolution in 1853. 

1 See Notes and Lectures on Shakespeare and other Poets by S. T. 
Coleridge, now first collected by T. Ashe, 1883. Coleridge hotly resented 
the remark, which he attributed to Wordsworth, that a German critic 
first taught us to think correctly concerning Shakespeare. (Coleridge 
to Mudford, 1818; cf. Dyke Campbell's memoir of Coleridge, p. cv.). But 
there is much to be said for Wordsworth's general view (seep. 344, note 1). 



334 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

The New Shakspere Society, which was founded by 
Dr. Furnivall in 1874, issued during the ensuing 
twenty years twenty-seven publications, illustrative 
mainly of the text and of contemporary life and 
literature. 

In 1769 Shakespeare's 'jubilee' was celebrated 
for three days (September 6-8) at Stratford, under 
Stratford the direction of Garrick, Dr. Arne, and 
festivals. Boswell. The festivities were repeated 
on a small scale in April 1827 and April 1830. 
' The Shakespeare tercentenary festival,' which was 
held at Stratford from April 23 to May 4, 1864, 
claimed to be a national celebration. 1 

On the English stage the name of every eminent 
actor since Betterton, the great actor of the period 
,.' of the Restoration, has been identified 

On the 

English with Shakespearean parts. Steele, writing 
stage * in the 'Tatler' (No. 167) in reference to 

Betterton's funeral in the cloisters of Westminster 
Abbey on May 2, 1710, instanced his rendering of 
Othello as proof of an unsurpassable talent in 
realising Shakespeare's subtlest conceptions on the 
stage. One great and welcome innovation in Shake- 
spearean acting is closely associated with Betterton's 
The first name. He encouraged the substitution, that 
of actresses was inaugurated by Killigrew, of women for 
in shake- \ )0 y S m f ema i e parts. The first role that was 

spearean J r 

parts. professionally rendered by a woman in a 

public theatre was that of Desdemona in ' Othello,' 

1 R. E. Hunter, Shakespeare and the Tercentena7-y Celebration, 
1864. 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 335 

apparently on December 8, 1660. 1 The actress on 
this occasion is said to have been Mrs. Margaret 
Hughes, Prince Rupert's mistress; but Betterton'swife, 
who was at first known on the stage as Mrs. Saunder- 
son, was the first actress to present a series of Shake- 
speare's great female characters. Mrs. Betterton gave 
her husband powerful support, from 1663 onwards, in 
such roles as Ophelia, Juliet, Queen Catherine, and Lady 
Macbeth. Betterton formed a school of actors who 
carried on his traditions for many years after his death. 
Robert Wilks (1670-1732) as Hamlet, and Barton 
Booth (1681-1733) as Henry VIII and Hotspur, were 
popularly accounted no unworthy successors. Colley 
Cibber (1 671-175 7) as actor, theatrical manager, and 
dramatic critic was both a loyal disciple of Betterton 
and a lover of Shakespeare, though his vanity and his 
faith in the ideals of the Restoration incited him to 
perpetrate many outrages on Shakespeare's text when 
preparing it for theatrical representation. His noto- 
rious adaptation of ' Richard III,' which was first pro- 
duced in 1700, long held the stage to the exclusion of 
the original version. But towards the middle of the 
eighteenth century all earlier efforts to interpret 
Shakespeare in the playhouse were eclipsed in public 
esteem by the concentrated energy and intelligence 
of David Garrick. Garrick's enthusiasm for the poet 

1 Thomas Jordan, a very humble poet, wrote a prologue to notify 
the new procedure, and referred to the absurdity of the old custom : 

For to speak truth, men act, that are between 
Forty and fifty, wenches of fifteen, 
With bone so large and nerve so uncompliant, 
When you call Desdemona, enter Giant. 



336 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

and his histrionic genius riveted Shakespeare's hold 
on public taste. His claim to have restored to the 
stage the text of Shakespeare — purified of Restora- 
tion defilements — cannot be allowed without serious 
qualifications. Garrick had no scruple in presenting 
David plays of Shakespeare in versions that he or 
Garrick, his friends had recklessly garbled. He sup- 
plied ' Romeo and Juliet ' with a happy 
ending ; he converted ' The Taming of The Shrew ' into 
the farce of ' Katherine and Petruchio,' 1754; he 
introduced radical changes in 'Antony and Cleopatra,' 
'Two Gentlemen of Verona,' ' Cymbeline,' and ' Mid- 
summer Night's Dream.' Nevertheless, no actor has 
won an equally exalted reputation in so vast and 
varied a repertory of Shakespearean roles. His tri- 
umphant debut as Richard III in 1741 was followed by 
equally successful performances of Hamlet, Lear, 
Macbeth, King John, Romeo, Falconbridge, Othello, 
Leontes, Benedick, and Antony in ' Antony and 
Cleopatra.' Garrick was not quite undeservedly 
buried in Westminster Abbey on February 1, 1779, 
at the foot of Shakespeare's statue. 

Garrick was ably seconded by Mrs. Clive (171 1- 
85), Mrs. Cibber (1714-66), and Mrs. Pritchard 
(171 1-68). Mrs. Cibber as Constance in 'King John,' 
and Mrs. Pritchard in Lady Macbeth, excited some- 
thing of the same enthusiasm as Garrick in Richard III 
and Lear. There were, too, contemporary critics who 
judged rival actors to show in certain parts powers 
equal, if not superior, to those of Garrick. Charles 
Macklin (1697 ?-i797) for nearly half a century, from 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 337 

1735 to 1785, gave many hundred performances of a 
masterly rendering of Shylock. The character had, 
for many years previous to Macklin's assumption of it, 
been allotted to comic actors, but Macklin effectively 
concentrated his energy on the tragic significance of 
the part with an effect that Garrick could not surpass. 
Macklin was also reckoned successful in Polonius and 
Iago. John Henderson, the Bath Roscius (1747-85), 
who, like Garrick, was buried in Westminster Abbey, 
derived immense popularity from his representation 
of Falstaff ; while in subordinate characters like 
Mercutio, Slender, Jaques, Touchstone, and Sir Toby 
Belch, John Palmer (1742?-! 798) was held to ap- 
proach perfection. But Garrick was the accredited 
chief of the theatrical profession until his death. He 
was then succeeded in his place of predominance by 
John Philip Kemble, who derived invaluable support 
from his association with one abler than himself, 
his sister, Mrs. Siddons. 

Somewhat stilted and declamatory in speech, 
Kemble enacted a wide range of characters of 
John Shakespearean tragedy with a dignity that 

Kemble won the admiration of Pitt, Sir Walter 
1757-1823. Scott, Charles Lamb, and Leigh Hunt. 
Coriolanus was regarded as his masterpiece, but his 
renderings of Hamlet, King John, Wolsey, the Duke in 
' Measure for Measure,' Leontes, and Brutus satisfied 
Mrs Sarah ^ e most exacting canons of contemporary 
Siddons, theatrical criticism. Kemble's sister, Mrs. 
1755-1 3I * Siddons, was the greatest actress that Shake- 
speare's countrymen have known. Her noble and 



33§ WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

awe-inspiring presentation of Lady Macbeth, her 
Constance, her Queen Katherine, have, according to 
the best testimony, not been equalled even by the 
achievements of the eminent actresses of France. 

During the present century the most conspicuous 
histrionic successes in Shakespearean drama have 
Edmund Deen won by Edmund Kean, whose tri- 
Kean, umphant rendering of Shyiock on his first ap- 

17 7_I 33 ' pearance at Drury Lane Theatre on January 
26, 1 8 14, is one of the most stirring incidents in the 
history of the English stage. Kean defied the rigid 
convention of the 'Kemble School,' and gave free rein 
to his impetuous passions. Besides Shyiock, he ex- 
celled in Richard III, Othello, Hamlet, and Lear. No 
less a critic than Coleridge declared that to see him 
act was like ' reading Shakespeare by flashes of 
lightning.' Among other Shakespearean actors of 
Kean's period a high place was allotted by public 
esteem to George Frederick Cooke (1 756-1 81 1), whose 
Richard III, first given in London at Covent Garden 
Theatre, October 31, 1801, was accounted his master- 
piece. Charles Lamb, writing in 1822, declared that 
of all the actors who flourished in his time, Robert 
Bensley 'had most of the swell of soul,' and Lamb 
gave with a fine enthusiasm in his ' Essays of Elia ' 
an analysis (which has become classical) of Bensley's 
performance of Malvolio. But Bensley's powers were 
rated more moderately by more experienced play- 
goers. 1 Lamb's praises of Mrs. Jordan (1762-18 16) 
in Ophelia, Helena, and Viola in 'Twelfth Night,' are 

1 Essays of Elia, ed. Canon Ainger, pp. 180 seq. 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 339 

corroborated by the eulogies of Hazlitt and Leigh 
Hunt. In the part of Rosalind Mrs. Jordan is re- 
ported on all sides to have beaten Mrs. Siddons out 
of the field. 

The torch thus lit by Garrick, by the Kembles, and 
by Kean and his contemporaries was worthily kept 
alive by William Charles Macready, a cultivated and 
conscientious actor, who, during a professional career 
William of more than forty years (18 10-51), as- 
Macreadv sume< ^ every great part in Shakespearean 
1793-1873. tragedy. Although Macready lacked the 
classical bearing of Kemble or the intense passion of 
Kean, he won as the interpreter of Shakespeare the 
whole-hearted suffrages of the educated public. Mac- 
ready's chief associate in women characters was Helen 
Faucit (afterward Lady Martin), whose refined imper- 
sonations of Imogen, Beatrice, Juliet, and Rosalind 
form an attractive chapter in the history of the stage. 

The most notable tribute paid to Shakespeare 
by any actor-manager of recent times was paid by 
Samuel Phelps (1804-78), who gave during his 
Recent tenure of Sadler's Wells Theatre between 
revivals. 1844 and 1 862 competent representations of 
all the plays save ' Troilus and Cressida,' and 'Titus 
Andronicus.' Sir Henry Irving, who since 1878 has 
been ably seconded by Miss Ellen Terry, has revived 
at the Lyceum Theatre between 1874 and the present 
time eleven plays (' Hamlet,' ' Macbeth,' ' Othello,' 
' Richard III,' ' The Merchant of Venice,' ' Much Ado 
about Nothing,' 'Twelfth Night,' 'Romeo and Juliet,' 
'King Lear,' 'Henry VIII,' and ' Cymbeline '), and 



340 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

has given each of them all the advantage they can 
derive from thoughtful acting as well as from lavish 
scenic elaboration. 1 But theatrical revivals of plays 
of Shakespeare are in England intermittent, and no 
theatrical manager since Phelps's retirement has 
sought systematically to illustrate on the stage the 
full range of Shakespearean drama. Far more in 
this direction has been attempted in Germany. 2 
In one respect the history of recent Shakespearean 
representations can be viewed by the literary student 
with unqualified satisfaction. Although some changes 
of text or some rearrangement of the scenes are found 
imperative in all theatrical representations of Shake- 
speare, a growing public sentiment in England and 
elsewhere has for many years favoured as loyal an 
adherence to the authorised version of the plays as 
is practicable on the part of theatrical managers ; and 
the evil traditions of the stage which sanctioned the 
perversions of the eighteenth century are happily 
well-nigh extinct. 

Music and art in England owe much to Shake- 
speare's influence. From Thomas Morley, Purcell, 
in music Matthew Locke, and Arne to William 
and art. Linley, Sir Henry Bishop, and Sir Arthur 
Sullivan, every distinguished musician has sought to 
improve on his predecessor's setting of one or more 
of Shakespeare's songs, or has composed concerted 

1 Hamlet in 1874-5 and Macbeth in 1888-9 were each performed by 
Sir Henry Irving for 200 nights in uninterrupted succession; these are 
the longest continuous runs that any of Shakespeare's plays are known 
to have enjoyed. ' 2 See p. 346. 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 34 1 

music in illustration of some of his dramatic themes. 1 
In art, the publisher John Boydell organised in 1787 
a scheme for illustrating scenes in Shakespeare's 
work by the greatest living English artists. Some 
fine pictures were the result. A hundred and sixty- 
eight were painted in all, and the artists whom 
Boydell employed included Sir Joseph Reynolds, 
George Romney, Thomas Stothard, John Opie, 
Benjamin West, James Barry, and Henry Fuseli. 
All the pictures were exhibited from time to time, 
between 1789 and 1804, at a gallery specially built 
for the purpose in Pall Mall, and in 1802 Boydell 
published a collection of engravings of the chief 
pictures. The great series of paintings was dispersed 
by auction in 1805. Few eminent artists of later 
date, from Daniel Maclise to Sir John Millais, have 
lacked the ambition to interpret some scene or char- 
acter of Shakespearean drama. 

In America no less enthusiasm for Shakespeare 
has been manifested than in England. Editors and 
in Amer- critics are hardly less numerous there, and 
ica - some criticism from American pens, like that 

of James Russell Lowell, has reached the highest 
literary level. Nowhere, perhaps, has more labour 
been devoted to the study of his works than that 
given by Mr. H. H. Furness of Philadelphia to the 
preparation of his ' New Variorum ' edition. The 
Barton collection of Shakespeareana in the Boston 
Public Library is one of the most valuable extant, 
and the elaborate catalogue (1878-80) contains some 

1 Cf. Alfred Roffe, Shakspere Music, 1878; Songs in Shakspere 
. . . set to Music, 1884, New Shakspere Society. 



342 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

2,500 entries. First of Shakespeare's plays to be 
represented in America, ' Richard III ' was performed 
in New York in March 1750. More recently Edwin 
Forrest, Junius Brutus Booth, Edwin Booth, Charlotte 
Cushman, and Miss Ada Rehan have maintained on 
the American stage the great traditions of Shake- 
spearean acting ; while Mr. E. A. Abbey has devoted 
high artistic gifts to pictorial representation of scenes 
from the plays. 

The Bible, alone of literary compositions, has been 
translated more frequently or into a greater number 
Transia- of languages than the works of Shakespeare, 
tions. The progress of his reputation in Germany, 

France, Italy, and Russia was somewhat slow at the 
outset. But in Germany the poet has received for 
nearly a century and a half a recognition scarcely less 
pronounced than that accorded him in America and in 
his own country. Three of Shakespeare's plays, now 
in Ger- in the Zurich Library, were brought thither 
man y- by J. R. Hess from England in 1614. Asearly 
as 1626 'Hamlet,' 'King Lear,' and 'Romeo and Juliet' 
were acted at Dresden, and a version of 'The Taming 
of The Shrew ' was played there and elsewhere at the 
end of the seventeenth century. But such mention 
of Shakespeare as is found in German literature 
between 1640 and 1740 only indicates a knowledge 
on the part of German readers either of Dryden's 
criticisms or of the accounts of him printed in English 
encyclopaedias. 1 The earliest sign of a direct acquaint- 

1 Cf. D. G. Morhoff, Unterricht von der teutschen Sprache und 
Poesie, Kiel, 1682, p. 250. 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 343 

ance with the plays is a poor translation of 'Julius 
Caesar' into German by Baron C. W. von Borck, 
formerly Prussian minister in London, which was pub- 
lished at Berlin in 1 741 . A worse rendering of ' Romeo 
and Juliet' followed in 1758. Meanwhile J. C. Gott- 
sched (1700-66), an influential man of letters, warmly 
denounced Shakespeare in a review of Von Borck's 
effort in ' Beitrage zur deutschen Sprache ' and else- 
where. Lessing came without delay to Shakespeare's 
rescue, and set his reputation, in the estimation of the 
German public, on that exalted pedestal which it has 
not ceased to occupy. It was in 1759, in a journal 
entitled ' Litteraturbriefe,' that Lessing first claimed 
for Shakespeare superiority, not only to the French 
dramatists Racine and Corneille, who hitherto had 
dominated European taste, but to all ancient or 
modern poets. Lessing's doctrine, which he devel- 
oped in his ' Hamburgische Dramaturgic ' (Hamburg, 
1767, 2 vols. 8vo), was at once accepted by the poet 
Johann Gottfried Herder in the ' Blatter von deutschen 
Art und Kunst,' 1771. Christopher Martin Wieland 
(1733-18 1 3) in 1762 began a prose translation which 
Johann Joachim Eschenburg (1 743-1 820) completed 
(Zurich, 13 vols., 1775-84). Between 1797 and 1833 
there appeared at intervals the classical German ren- 
dering by August Wilhelm von Schlegel and Lud- 
German w ^> Tieck, leaders of the romantic school of 
transia- German literature, whose creed embodied, as 
one of its first articles, an unwavering venera- 
tion for Shakespeare. Schlegel translated only seven- 
teen plays, and his workmanship excels that of the 



344 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

rest of the translation. Tieck's part in the under- 
taking was mainly confined to editing translations by 
various hands. Many other German translations in 
verse were undertaken during the same period, — by 
J. H. Voss and his sons (Leipzig, 1818-29), by J. W. 
O. Benda (Leipzig, 1825-6), by J. Korner (Vienna, 
1836), by A. Bottger (Leipzig, 1836-7), by E. Ortlepp 
(Stuttgart, 1838-9), and by A. Keller and M. Rapp 
(Stuttgart, 1843-6). The best of more recent German 
translations is that by a band of poets and eminent men 
of letters, including Friedrich von Bodenstedt, Ferdi- 
nand Freiligrath, and Paul Heyse (Leipzig, 1867-71, 38 
vols.). Most of these versions have been many times 
reissued, but, despite the high merits of Von Bodenstedt 
and his companions' performance, Schlegel and Tieck's 
achievement still holds the field. Schlegel's lectures on 
'Shakespeare and the Drama,' which were delivered 
at Vienna in 1808, and were translated into English 
in 18 1 5, are worthy of comparison with those of Cole- 
ridge, who owed much to their influence. Wordsworth 
in 181 5 declared that Schlegel and his disciples first 
marked out the right road in aesthetic criticism, and 
enjoyed at the moment superiority over all English 
aesthetic critics of Shakespeare. 1 Subsequently Goethe 

1 In his ' Essay Supplementary to the Preface ' in the edition of his 
Poems of 1815, Wordsworth wrote: 'The Germans only, of foreign 
nations, are approaching towards a knowledge of what he \i.e. Shake- 
speare] is. In some respects they have acquired a superiority over the 
fellow-countrymen of the poet ; for among us, it is a common — I might 
say an established — opinion that Shakespeare is justly praised when he is 
pronounced to be " a wild irregular genius in whom great faults are com- 
pensated by great beauties." How long may it be before this misconcep- 
tion passes away and it becomes universally acknowledged that the judg- 
ment of Shakespeare . . . is not less admirable than his imagination? . . .' 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 345 

poured forth, in his voluminous writings, a mass of 
criticism even more illuminating and appreciative 
than Schlegel's. 1 Although Goethe deemed Shake- 
speare's works unsuited to the stage, he adapted 
1 Romeo and Juliet ' for the Weimar Theatre, while 
Schiller prepared ' Macbeth ' (Stuttgart, 1801). Heine 
published in 1838 charming studies of Shakespeare's 
heroines(English translation 1895), and acknowledged 
only one defect in Shakespeare — that he was an 
Englishman. 

During the last half-century textual, aesthetic, and 
biographical criticism has been pursued in Germany 
with unflagging industry and energy ; and although 
laboured and supersubtle theorising characterises 
much German aesthetic criticism, its mass and variety 
testify to the impressiveness of the appeal that Shake- 
Modern speare's work has made to the German 
German intellect. The vain effort to stem the current 
shake- of Shakespearean worship made by the 
speare. dramatist, J. R. Benedix, in ' Die Shakespearo- 
manie ' (Stuttgart, 1873, 8vo), stands practically alone. 
In studies of the text and metre Nikolaus Delius 
(1813-88) should, among recent German writers, be 
accorded the first place ; in studies of the biography 
and stage history Friedrich Karl Elze (1821-89); 
in aesthetic studies Friedrich Alexander Theodor 
Kreyssig (1818-79), author of 'Vorlesungen iiber 
Shakespeare ' (Berlin, 1858 and 1874), and 'Shake- 
speare-Fragen ' (Leipzig, 1871). Ulrici's 'Shake- 
speare's Dramatic Art ' (first published at Halle in 

1 Cf. Wilhelm Meister. 



346 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

1839) an d Gervinus's Commentaries (first published 
at Leipzig in 1848-9), both of which are familiar in 
English translations, are suggestive but unconvincing 
aesthetic interpretations. The German Shakespeare 
Society, which was founded at Weimar in 1865, has 
published thirty-four year-books (edited successively 
by Von Bodenstedt, Delius, Elze, and F. A. Leo); 
each contains useful contributions to Shakespearean 
study. 

Shakespeare has been no less effectually nation- 
alised on the German stage. The three great actors — 
OntheGer- Frederick Ulrich Ludwig Schroeder (1744- 
man stage. l8l 5) f Hamburg, Ludwig Devrient(i784~ 
1832), and his nephew Gustav Emil Devrient (1803- 
J2) — largely derived their fame from their suc- 
cessful assumptions of Shakespearean characters. 
Another of Ludwig Devrient's nephews, Eduard 
(1801-77), also an actor, prepared, with his son 
Otto, an acting German edition (Leipzig, 1873 and 
following years). An acting edition by Wilhelm 
Oechelhaeuser appeared previously at Berlin in 1871. 
Twenty-eight of the thirty-seven plays assigned to 
Shakespeare are now on recognised lists of German 
acting plays, including all the histories. 1 In 1895 
as many as 706 performances of twenty-five of 
Shakespeare's plays were given in German theatres. 2 
In 1896 no fewer than 9 10 performances were given of 
twenty-three plays. In 1897 performances of twenty- 
four plays reached a total of 930 — an average of 

1 Cf. Jahrbuch der Deutsche Shakespeare- Geselhchaft for 1894. 

2 lb. for 1896, p. 438. 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 347 

nearly three Shakespearean representations a day in 
the German-speaking districts of Europe. : It is 
not only in capitals like Berlin and Vienna that the 
representations are frequent and popular. In towns 
like Altona, Breslau, Frankfort-on-the-Maine, Ham- 
burg, Magdeburg, and Rostock, Shakespeare is acted 
constantly and the greater number of his dramas is 
regularly kept in rehearsal. 'Othello,' 'Hamlet,' 
' Romeo and Juliet,' and ' The Taming of The Shrew ' 
usually prove most attractive. Of the many German 
musical composers who have worked on Shakespear- 
ean themes, Mendelssohn (in ' Midsummer Night's 
Dream '), Schumann, and Franz Schubert (in setting 
separate songs) have achieved the greatest success. 

In France Shakespeare won recognition after a 

longer struggle than in Germany. Cyrano de Ber- 

gerac (1619-55) plagiarised ' Cymbeline,' 

■ Hamlet,' and ' The Merchant of Venice ' 

in his 'Agrippina.' About 1680 Nicolas Clement, 

Louis XIV's librarian, allowed Shakespeare imagina- 

i.The exact statistics for 1896 and 1897 were: 'Othello,' acted 
135 and 121 times for the respective years; 'Hamlet,' 102 and 91; 
'Romeo and Juliet,' 95 and 118; 'Taming of The Shrew,' 91 and 92; 
' The Merchant of Venice,' 84 and 62; 'A Midsummer Night's Dream,' 
68 and 92; 'A Winter's Tale,' 49 and 65; ' Much Ado about Nothing,' 
47 and 32; 'Lear,' 41 and 34; 'As You Like It,' 37 and 29; 
'Comedy of Errors,' 29 and 43; 'Julius Caesar,' 27 and 29; 'Mac- 
beth,' 10 and 12; 'Timon of Athens,' 7 and o; 'The Tempest,' 5 
and I; 'Antony and Cleopatra,' 2 and 4; ' Coriolanus,' o and 20; 
'Cymbeline,' o and 4; 'Richard II,' 15 and 5; 'Henry IV,' Part I, 
26 and 23, Part II, 6 and 13; ' Henry V,' 4 and 7; ' Henry VI,' Part 
I, 3 and 5, Part II, 2 and 2; 'Richard III,' 25 and 26 (Jahrbuch der 
Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft for 1897, pp. 306 seq., and for 1898, 
pp. 440 seq.). 



348 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

tion, natural thoughts, and ingenious expression, but 
deplored his obscenity. 1 Half a century elapsed before 
public attention in France was again directed to Shake- 
speare. 2 The Abbe Prevost, in his periodical 'Le 
Pour et Contre ' (1733 seq.), acknowledged his power. 
But it is to Voltaire that his countrymen owe, as he him- 
self boasted, their first effective introduction to Shake- 
speare. Voltaire studied Shakespeare thoroughly on 
his visit to England between 1 7 '26 and 1 729, and his 
influence is visible in his own dramas. In his 'Lettres 
Philosophiques' ( 1 73 1 ), afterwards reissued as ' Lettres 
sur les Anglais,' 1734 (Nos. xviii. and xix.), and in 
his ' Lettre sur la Tragedie ' (1731), he expressed 
admiration for Shakespeare's genius, but attacked his 
Voltaire's want of taste and art. He described him as 
strictures. < \ Q c orne ille de Londres, grand f ou d'ailleurs, 
mais il a des morceaux admirables.' Writing to the 
Abbe des Fontaines in November 1735, Voltaire ad- 
mitted many merits in 'Julius Caesar,' on which he 
published ' Observations' in 1764. Johnson replied to 
Voltaire's general criticism in the preface to his edition 
(1765), and Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu in 1769 in a sepa- 
rate volume, which was translated into French in 
1777. Diderot made, in his ' Encyclopedic,' the first 
stand in France against the Voltairean position, and 
increased opportunities of studying Shakespeare's 
works increased the poet's vogue. Twelve plays 
were translated in De La Place's ' Theatre Anglais ' 

1 Jusserand, A French Ambassador, p. 56. 

2 Cf. Al. Schmidt, Voltaire's Verdienst von der Einfiihrung 
Shakespeares in Frankreich, Konigsberg, 1864. 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 349 

(1745-8). Jean-Francois Ducis (1733-1816) adapted 
without much insight six plays for the French stage, 
beginning in 1769 with ' Hamlet,' his version of which 
was acted with applause. In 1776 Pierre Le Tourneur 
began a bad prose translation (completed in 1782) of all 
Shakespeare's plays, and declared him to be ' the god 
of the theatre.' Voltaire protested against this esti- 
mate in a new remonstrance consisting of two letters, 
of which the first was read before the French Acad- 
emy on August 25, 1776. Here Shakespeare was 
described as a barbarian, whose works — ' a huge 
dunghill ' — concealed some pearls. 

Although Voltaire's censure was rejected by the 
majority of later French critics, it expressed a senti- 
ment born of the genius of the nation, and made an 
impression that was only gradually effaced. Mar- 
montel, La Harpe, Marie Joseph Chenier, and Chateau- 
briand, in his ' Essai sur Shakespeare,' 1801, inclined 
French to Voltaire's view ; but Madame de Stael 
Taduai wrote effectively on the other side in her 
emancipa- ' De la Litterature,' 1804 (i. caps. 13, 14, ii. 
voftairel 5> 'At this day,' wrote Wordsworth in 
influence. 1 8 1 5, ' the French critics have abated nothing 
of their aversion to "this darling of our nation." " The 
English with their bouffon de Shakespeare " is as 
familiar an expression among them as in the time of 
Voltaire. Baron Grimm is the only French writer 
who seems to have perceived his infinite superiority 
to the first names of the French theatre, — an advan- 
tage which the Parisian critic owed to his German 



350 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

blood and German education.' 1 The revision of Le 
Tourneur's translation by Francois Guizot and A. 
Pichot in 1821 gave Shakespeare a fresh advantage. 
Paul Duport, in ' Essais Litteraires sur Shakespeare ' 
(Paris, 1828, 2 vols.), was the last French critic of 
repute to repeat Voltaire's censure unreservedly. 
Guizot, in his ' Sur la Vie et les CEuvres de Shake- 
speare ' (reprinted separately from the translation of 
182 [), as well as in his ' Shakespeare et son Temps ' 
(1852); Villemain in a general essay, 2 and Barante in 
a study of ' Hamlet,' 3 acknowledged the mightiness of 
Shakespeare's genius with comparatively few qualifi- 
cations. Other complete translations followed — by 
Francisque Michel (1839), by Benjamin Laroche 
(185 1), and by Emil Montegut (1867); but the best 
is that in prose by Francois Victor Hugo (1859-66), 
whose father, Victor Hugo the poet, published a 
rhapsodical eulogy in 1 864. Alfred Mezieres's ' Shake- 
speare, ses CEuvres et ses Critiques' (Paris, i860), 
is a saner appreciation. 

Meanwhile ' Hamlet' and 'Macbeth,' ' Othello ' 
and a few other Shakespearean plays, became stock 
On the pieces on the French stage. A powerful im- 
French petus to theatrical representation of Shake- 
sta§e ' speare in France was given by the perform- 

1 Frederic Melchior, Baron Grimm (i 723-1807), for some years a 
friend of Rousseau and the correspondent of Diderot and the encyclo- 
pedistes, scattered many appreciative references to Shakespeare in his 
voluminous Correspondance litteraire Philosophique et Critique, extend- 
ing over the period 1753-70, the greater part of which was published 
in 16 vols. 1812-13. 

2 Melanges Historiques, 1827, iii. 141-87. 

3 Ibid. 1824, iii. 217-34. 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 35 I 

ance in Paris of the chief plays by a strong company 
of English actors in the autumn of 1827. ( Hamlet ' 
and ' Othello ' were acted successively by Charles 
Kemble and Macready ; Edmund Kean appeared 
as Richard III, Othello, and Shylock ; Miss Smith- 
son, who became the wife of Hector Berlioz the musi- 
cian, filled the roles of Ophelia, Juliet, Desdemona, 
Cordelia, and Portia. French critics were divided as 
to the merits of the performers, but most of them 
were enthusiastic in their commendations of the plays. 1 
Alfred de Vigny prepared a version of ' Othello ' for 
the Theatre-Francais in 1829 with eminent success. 
An adaptation of ' Hamlet ' by Alexandre Dumas 
was first performed in 1847, an d a rendering by the 
Chevalier de Chatelain (1864) was often repeated. 
George Sand translated 'As You Like It ' (Paris, 1856) 
for representation by the Comedie Francaise on 
April 12, 1856. 'Lady Macbeth' has been repre- 
sented in recent years by Madame Sarah Bernhardt, 
and 'Hamlet' by M. Mounet-Sully of the Theatre- 
Francais. 2 Four French musicians — Berlioz in his 
symphony of ' Romeo and Juliet,' Gounod in his 
opera of ' Romeo and Juliet,' Ambroise Thomas 
in his opera of ' Hamlet,' and Saint-Saens in his 
opera of ' Henry VIII ' — have sought with public 

1 Very interesting comments on these performances appeared day 
by day in the Paris newspaper La Globe. They were by Charles Magnin, 
who reprinted them in his Causeries et Meditations Historiques et 
Litteraires (Paris, 1843, "• 62 seq.). 

2 Cf. Lacroix, Histoire de P Influence de Shakespeare sur le Theatre 
Francais, 1867; Edinburgh Review, 1849, PP- 39~775 Elze, Essays, 
pp. 193 seq.; M. Jusserand, Shakespeare en France sous V Ancien 
Regime, Paris, 1898. 



352 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

approval to interpret musically portions of Shake- 
speare's work. 

In Italy Shakespeare was little known before the 
present century. Such references as eighteenth-cen- 
tury Italian writers made to him were based 
on remarks by Voltaire. 1 The French adap- 
tation of ' Hamlet ' by Ducis was issued in Italian 
blank verse (Venice, 1774, 8vo). Complete trans- 
lations of all the plays made direct from the English 
were issued by Michele Leoni in verse at Verona, 
1819-22, and by Carlo Rusconi in prose at Padua 
in 1831 (new edit. Turin, 1858-9). ' Othello ' and 
' Romeo and Juliet ' have been very often translated 
into Italian separately. The Italian actors, Madame 
Ristori (as Lady Macbeth), Salvini (as Othello), and 
Rossi rank among Shakespeare's most effective inter- 
preters. Verdi's operas on Macbeth, Othello, and 
Falstaff (the last two with libretti by Boito) betray 
a close and appreciative study of Shakespeare. 

Two complete translations have been published in 
Dutch : one in prose by A. S. Kok (Amsterdam, 1873- 

80), the other in verse bv Dr. L. A. T. Bur- 
in Holland. ' ,.., /T X , V 

gersdijk (Leyden, 1884-8, 12 vols.) 

In Eastern Europe, Shakespeare first became 

known through French and German translations. 

Into Russian ' Romeo and Juliet ' was translated in 

1772, 'Richard III' in 1783, and 'Julius Caesar' in 

1 786. Sumarakow translated Ducis's version 

In Russia. e t TX . , . 

of 'Hamlet m 1784 for stage purposes, 

1 Cf. Giovanni Andres, DeW Origine Progressi e Stato attuale 
'd ogni Letteratura, 1 782. 



POSTHUMOUS REPUTATION 353 

while the Empress Catherine II adapted the ' Merry 
Wives ' and ' King John.' Numerous versions of all 
the chief plays followed ; and in 1865 there appeared 
at St. Petersburg the best translation in verse (direct 
from the English), by Nekrasow and Gerbel. A prose 
translation, by N. Ketzcher, begun in 1862, was com- 
pleted in 1879. Gerbel issued a Russian translation 
of the 'Sonnets' in 1880, and many critical essays in 
the language, original or translated, have been pub- 
lished. Almost every play has been represented in 
Russian on the Russian stage. 1 

A Polish version of ' Hamlet ' was acted at Lem- 

berg in 1797; and as many as sixteen plays now 

hold a recognised place among Polish acting 

In Poland. . _ . 

plays. The standard Polish translation of 
Shakespeare's collected works appeared at Warsaw 
in 1875 (edited by the Polish poet Kraszewski), and 
is reckoned among the most successful renderings in 
a foreign tongue. 

In Hungary, Shakespeare's greatest works have 
since the beginning of the century been highly 
in Hun- appreciated by students and by playgoers, 
gary. ^ complete translation into Hungarian 

appeared at Kaschau in 1824. At the National 
Theatre at Budapest no less than twenty-two plays 
have been of late years included in the actors' 
repertory. 2 

1 Cf. New Shaksp. Soc. Trans. 1880-5, pt. ii. 431 seq. 

2 Cf. Ungarische Revue (Budapest) January 1 881, pp. 8l-2; and 
August Greguss's Shakspere . , . elso k'otet : Shakspere pdlydja, 
Budapest, 1880 (an account in Hungarian of Shakespeare's Life and 
Works). 

2A 



354 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Other complete translations have been published 
in Bohemian (Prague, 1874), in Swedish (Lund, 1847- 
in other 51), in Danish (1845-50), and Finnish 
countries. (Helsing'f ors, 1 892-5). In Spanish a com- 
plete translation is in course of publication (Madrid, 
1885 seq.), and the eminent Spanish critic Menendez 
y Pelayo has set Shakespeare above Calderon. In 
Armenian, although only three plays (' Hamlet,' 
1 Romeo and Juliet,' and ' As You Like It ') have 
been issued, the translation of the whole is ready for 
the press. Separate plays have appeared in Welsh, 
Portuguese, Friesic, Flemish, Servian Roumanian, 
Maltese, Ukrainian, Wallachian, Croatian, modern 
Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and Japanese; while a few have 
been rendered into Bengali, Hindustani, Marathi, 1 
Gujarati, Urdu, Kanarese, and other languages of 
India, and have been acted in native theatres. 

1 Cf. Mac miliar? s Magazine, May 1880. 



GENERAL ESTIMATE 355 



XXI 

GENERAL ESTIMATE 

No estimate of Shakespeare's genius can be ad- 
equate. In knowledge of human character, in 
General wealth of humour, in depth of passion, in 
estimate. fertility of fancy, and in soundness of judg- 
ment he has no rival. It is true of him, as of no 
other writer, that his language and versification adapt 
themselves to every phase of sentiment, and sound 
every note in the scale of felicity. Some defects 
are to be acknowledged, but they sink into insignifi- 
cance when measured by the magnitude of his 
achievement. Sudden transitions, elliptical expres- 
sions, mixed metaphors, indefensible verbal quibbles, 
and fantastic conceits at times create an atmosphere 
of obscurity. The student is perplexed, too, by obso- 
lete words and by some hopelessly corrupt readings. 
But when the whole of Shakespeare's vast work is 
scrutinised with due attention, the glow of his imagina- 
tion is seen to leave few passages wholly unillumined. 
Some of his plots are hastily constructed and incon- 
sistently developed, but the intensity of the interest 
with which he contrives to invest the personality of 
his heroes and heroines triumphs over halting or 



356 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

digressive treatment of the story in which they have 
their being. Although he was versed in the techni- 
calities of stagecraft, he occasionally disregarded its 
elementary conditions. But the success of his pre- 
sentments of human life and character depended 
little on his manipulation of theatrical machinery. 
His unassailable supremacy springs from the versatile 
working of his insight and intellect, by virtue of 
which his pen limned with unerring precision almost 
every gradation of thought and emotion that animates 
the living stage of the world. 

Shakespeare's mind, as Hazlitt suggested, con- 
tained within itself the germs of all faculty and feeling. 
He knew intuitively how every faculty and feeling 
would develop in any conceivable change of fortune. 
Men and women — good or bad, old or young, wise 
or foolish, merry or sad, rich or poor — yielded their 
secrets to him, and his genius enabled him to give 
being in his pages to all the shapes of humanity that 
present themselves on the highway of life. Each 
of his characters gives voice to thought or passion 
with an individuality and a naturalness that rouse 
Character m the intelligent playgoer and reader the 
of shake- illusion that they are overhearing men and 

speare's J . 

achieve- women speak unpremeditatmgly among 
ment - themselves, rather than that they are read- 

ing written speeches or hearing written speeches 
recited. The more closely the words are studied, 
the completer the illusion grows. Creatures of the 
imagination — fairies, ghosts, witches — are delineated 
with a like potency, and the reader or spectator 



GENERAL ESTIMATE 357 

feels instinctively that these supernatural entities 
could not speak, feel, or act otherwise than Shake- 
speare represents them. The creative power of 
poetry was never manifested to such effect as in the 
corporeal semblances in which Shakespeare clad the 
spirits of the air. 

So mighty a faculty sets at naught the common 
limitations of nationality, and in every quarter of the 
its univer- gl° De to which civilised life has penetrated 
sal recogni- Shakespeare's power is recognised. All the 
world over, language is applied to his crea- 
tions that ordinarily applies to beings of flesh and 
blood. Hamlet and Othello, Lear and Macbeth, 
Falstaff and Shylock, Brutus and Romeo, Ariel and 
Caliban, are studied in almost every civilised tongue 
as if they were historic personalities, and the chief 
of the impressive phrases that fall from their lips are 
rooted in the speech of civilised humanity. To 
Shakespeare the intellect of the world, speaking in 
divers accents, applies with one accord his own words : 
' How noble in reason ! how infinite in faculty ! in 
apprehension how like a god ! ' 



APPENDIX 



APPENDIX 



THE SOURCES OF BIOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE 

The scantiness of contemporary records of Shakespeare's career 
has been much exaggerated. An investigation extending over 
Contempo- two centuries has brought together a mass of detail 
rary records which far exceeds that accessible in the case of any 
abundant, other contemporary professional writer. Nevertheless, 
some important links are missing, and at some critical points 
appeal to conjecture is inevitable. But the fully ascertained 
facts are numerous enough to define sharply the general direc- 
tion that Shakespeare's career followed. Although the clues 
are in some places faint, the trail never altogether eludes the 
patient investigator. 

Fuller, in his 'Worthies 1 (1662), attempted the first 
biographical notice of Shakespeare, with poor results. Aubrey, 
First in his gossiping i Lives of Eminent Men, 11 based his 

efforts in ampler information on reports communicated to him 
biography. Dy William Beeston (d. 1682), an aged actor, whom 
Dryden called ' the chronicle of the stage, 1 and who was doubt- 
less in the main a trustworthy witness. A few additional details 
were recorded in the seventeenth century by the Rev. John 
Ward (1629-168 1 ), vicar of Stratford-on-Avon from 1662 to 
1668, in a diary and memorandum-book written between 1661 

1 Compiled between 1669 and 1696; first printed in Letters from the Bodleian, 
1813, and admirably re-edited for the Clarendon Press during the present year by 
the Rev. Andrew Clark (2 vols.). 

361 



362 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

and 1663 (ed. C. A. Severn, 1839) 5 by tne ^ ev - William 
Fulman, whose manuscripts are at Corpus Christi College, 
Oxford (with valuable interpolations made before 1708 by the 
Rev. Richard Davies, vicar of Saperton, Gloucestershire) ; by 
John Dowdall, who recorded his experiences of travel through 
Warwickshire in 1693 (London, 1838) ; and by William Hall, 
who described a visit to Stratford in 1694 (London, 1884, from 
Hall's letter among the Bodleian MSS.). Phillips in his 
' Theatrum Poetarum ' (1675), and Langbaine in his ' English 
Dramatick Poets 1 (1691), confined themselves to elementary 
criticism. In 1709 Nicholas Rowe prefixed a more ambitious 
memoir than had yet been attempted to his edition of the plays, 
and embodied some hitherto unrecorded Stratford and London 
traditions with which the actor Thomas Betterton supplied 
him. A little fresh gossip was collected by William Oldys, 
and was printed from his manuscript 'Adversaria' (now in 
the British Museum) as an appendix to YeowelPs ' Memoir of 
Oldys, 1 1862. Pope, Johnson, and Steevens, in the biographical 
prefaces to their editions, mainly repeated the narratives of 
their predecessor, Rowe. 

In the Prolegomena to the Variorum editions of 1803, 18 13, 
and especially in that of 1821 there was embodied a mass of 
Biograph- fresh information derived by Edmund Malone from 
ers of the systematic researches among the parochial records 
nineteenth of Stratford, the manuscripts accumulated by the 
century. actor Alleyn at Dulwich, and official papers of state 
preserved in the public offices in London (now collected in the 
Public Record Office). The available knowledge of Elizabethan 
stage history as well as of Shakespeare's biography, was thus 
greatly extended. John Payne Collier, in his 'History of 
English Dramatic Poetry 1 (183 1), in his "New Facts 1 about 
Shakespeare (1835), his 'New Particulars 1 (1836), and his 
' Further Particulars ? (1839), an d in his editions of Henslowe's 
' Diary 1 and the ' Alleyn Papers ' for the Shakespeare Society, 
while occasionally throwing some further light on obscure 
places, foisted on Shakespeare 1 s biography a series of ingeniously 
forged documents which have greatly perplexed succeeding 
biographers. 1 Joseph Hunter in ' New Illustrations of Shake- 

1 See p. 367-8. 



SOURCES OF BIOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE 363 

speare ' (1845) and George Russell French's l Shakespeareana 
Genealogica ' (1869) occasionally supplemented Malone's re- 
searches. James Orchard Halliwell (afterwards Halliwell- 
Phillipps) printed separately, between 1850 and 1884, in various 
privately issued publications, all the Stratford archives and 
extant legal documents bearing on Shakespeare's career, many 
of them for the first time. In 1881 Halliwell-Phillipps began the 
collective publication of materials for a full biography in his 
' Outlines of the Life of Shakespeare ' ; this work was generously 
enlarged in successive editions until it acquired massive propor- 
tions; in the fourth and last edition of 1887 it numbered near 
1,000 pages. Mr. Frederick Gard Fleay, in his 'Shakespeare 
Manual 1 (1876), in 'his 'Life of Shakespeare 1 (1886), in his 
' History of the Stage 1 (1890), and his 'Biographical Chronicle 
of the English Drama' (1891), adds much useful information 
respecting stage history and Shakespeare's relations with his 
fellow-dramatists, mainly derived from a study of the original 
editions of the plays of Shakespeare and of his contemporaries ; 
but unfortunately many of Mr. Fleay's statements and conjec- 
tures are unauthenticated. For notices of Stratford, R. B. 
Wheler's 'History and Antiquities 1 (1806), John R. Wise's 
Stratford ' Shakespere, his Birthplace and its Neighbourhood ' 
topo- (1861), the present writer's ' Stratford-on-Avon to 

graphy. the Death of Shakespeare' (1890), and Mrs. C. C. 
Stopes's ' Shakespeare's Warwickshire Contemporaries 1 (1897) 
may be consulted. Wise appends to his volume 2 tentative 
'glossary of words still used in Warwickshire to be found in 
Shakspere.' The parish registers of Stratford have been edited 
by Mr. Richard Savage for the Parish Registers Society, 1898-9. 
Nathan Drake's ' Shakespeare and his Times* (1817) and G. W. 
Thornbury's 'Shakespeare's England' (1856) collect much 
material respecting Shakespeare's social environment. 

The chief monographs on special points in Shakespeare's 
biography are Dr. Richard Farmer's ' Essay on the Learning of 
Specialised Shakespeare 1 (1767), reprinted in the Variorum 
studies in editions ; Octavius Gilchrist's ' Examination of the 
biography. Charges ... of Ben Jonson's Enmity towards 
Shakespeare 1 (1808); W. J. Thoms's 'Was Shakespeare ever 
a Soldier ?' (1849), a study based on an erroneous identification 



364 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

of the poet with another William Shakespeare ; Lord Campbell's 
' Shakespeare's Legal Acquirements Considered ' (1859); John 
Charles BucknilFs k Medical Knowledge of Shakespeare ' (i860) • 
C. F. Green's ' Shakespeare's Crab-Tree, with its Legend' (1862) ; 

C. H. Bracebridge's 'Shakespeare no Deer-stealer ' (1862); 
William Blades's ' Shakspere and Typography' (1872); and 

D. H. Madden's 'Diary of Master William Silence (Shakespeare 
and Sport),' 1897. A full epitome of the biographical informa- 
tion accessible at the date of publication is supplied in Karl 

Elze's'Life of Shakespeare' (Halle, 1876; English 
Useful epi- translat i on ^ l888 ) ? with which Elze ^ s 'Essays' from 

the publications of the German Shakespeare Society 
(English translation, 1874) are worth studying. A less ambitious 
effort of the same kind by Samuel Neil (1861) is seriously 
injured by the writer's acceptance of Collier's forgeries. Pro- 
fessor Dowden's 'Shakespeare Primer' (1877) and his 'Intro- 
duction to Shakespeare' (1893), and Dr. Furnivall's 'Intro- 
duction to the Leopold Shakespeare, 1 are all useful summaries 
of leading facts. 

Francis Douce's 'Illustrations of Shakespeare' (1807, new 
edit. 1839), 'Shakespeare's Library' (ed. J. P. Collier and W. C. 
Aids to Hazlitt, 1875), 'Shakespeare's Plutarch' (ed. Skeat. 

study of 1875), and 'Shakespeare's Holinshed ' (ed. W. G. 
plots and Boswell-Stone, 1896) are of service in tracing the 
text. sources of Shakespeare's plots. Alexander Schmidt's 

'Shakespeare Lexicon' (1874) and Dr. E. A. Abbott's 'Shake- 
spearean Grammar' (1869, new edit. 1893) are valuable aids to 

a study of the text. Useful concordances to the 
Concor- pi avs have been prepared by Mrs. Cowden-Clarke 

(1845), t0 the Poems by Mrs. H. H. Furness 
(Philadelphia, 1875), and to Plays and Poems, in one volume, 
with references to numbered lines, by John Bartlett (London 
and New York, 1895). 1 A 'Handbook Index ' by J. O. Halliwell 
(privately printed 1866) gives lists of obsolete words and phrases, 
songs, proverbs, and plants mentioned in the works of Shake- 
speare. An unprinted glossary prepared by Richard Warner 

1 The earliest attempts at a concordance were A Complete Verbal Index to the 
Plays, by F. Twiss (1805), and An [?idex to the Remarkable Passages and Words, 
by Samuel Ayscough (1827), but these are now superseded. 



SHAKESPEAREAN FORGERIES 365 

between 1750 and 1770 is at the British Museum (Addit. MSS. 

10472-542). Extensive bibliographies are given in 

1 ] °r Lowndes's ' Library Manual ' (ed. Bohn) ; in Franz 

Thimnvs ' Shakespeariana ' (1864 and 1871) ; in the 

i Encyclopaedia Britannica,' 9th edit, (skilfully classified by 

Mr. H. R. Tedder); and in the 'British Museum Catalogue 1 

(the Shakespearean entries in which, comprising 3,680 titles, 

were separately published in 1897). 

The valuable publications of the Shakespeare Society, the 
New Shakspere Society, and of the Deutsche Shakespeare- 
Gesellschaft, comprising contributions alike to the 
"V. ca aesthetic, textual, historical, and biographical study of 

Shakespeare, are noticed above (see pp. 333-4, 346). 
To the critical studies, on which comment has already been made 
(see p. 333), — viz. Coleridge's 'Notes and Lectures,' 1883. 
Hazlitt's 'Characters of Shakespeare's Plays, 1 18 17, Professor 
Dowden's 'Shakespeare: his Mind and Art,' 1875, and Mr. 
A. C. Swinburne. 'A Study of Shakespeare,' 1879, — there 
may be added the essays on Shakespeare's heroines respectively 
by Mrs. Jameson in 1833 and Lady Martin in 1885 ; Dr. Ward's 
'English Dramatic Literature' (1875, new edit. 1898); Richard 
G. Moulton's 'Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist' (1885); 
'Shakespeare Studies' by Thomas Spencer Baynes (1893); 
F. S. Boas's 'Shakspere and his Predecessors' (1895), and 
Georg Brandes's ' William Shakespeare ' — an elaborately critical 
but somewhat fanciful study — in Danish (Copenhagen, 1895, 
8vo), in German (Leipzig, 1895), and in English (London, 1898, 
2 vols. 8vo). 

The intense interest which Shakespeare's life and work have 
long universally excited has tempted unprincipled or sportively 
Shake- mischievous writers from time to time to deceive the 

spearean public by the forgery of documents purporting to 
forgeries. supply new information. The forgers were espe- 
cially active at the end of the last century and during the middle 
years of the present century, and their frauds have caused 
students so much perplexity that it may be useful to warn them 
against those Shakespearean forgeries which have obtained the 
widest currency. 

The earliest forger to obtain notoriety was John Jordan 



366 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

(i 746-1 809), a resident at Stratford-on-Avon, whose most impor- 
Tohn Tor- tant achievement was the forgery of the will of 
dan, Shakespeare's father; but many other papers in 

1746-1809. Jordan's 'Original Collections on Shakespeare and 
Stratford-on-Avon' (1780), and 'Original Memoirs and Histori- 
cal Accounts of the Families of Shakespeare and Hart,' are open 
to the gravest suspicion. 1 

The best-known Shakespearean forger of the eighteenth 
century was William Henry Ireland (1777-1835), a barrister's 
The Ire- clerk, who, with the aid of his father, Samuel Ireland 
land forger- (i740?-i8oo), an author and engraver of some repute, 
ies, 1796. produced in 1 796 a volume of forged papers claiming 
to relate to Shakespeare's career. The title ran : ' Miscellaneous 
Papers and Legal Instruments under the Hand and Seal of 
William Shakespeare, including the tragedy of " King Lear " and 
a small fragment of "Hamlet" from the original MSS. in the 
possession of Samuel Ireland.' On April 2, 1796, Sheridan and 
Kemble produced at Drury Lane Theatre a bombastic tragedy 
in blank verse entitled * Vortigern ' under the pretence that it 
was by Shakespeare, and had been recently found among the 
manuscripts of the dramatist that had fallen into the hands of the 
Irelands. The piece, which was published, was the invention of 
young Ireland. The fraud of the Irelands, which for some time 
deceived a section of the literary public, was finally exposed by 
Malone in his valuable ' Inquiry into the Authenticity of the 
Ireland MSS.' (1796). Young Ireland afterwards published his 
'Confessions' (1805). He had acquired much skill in copying 
Shakespeare's genuine signature from the facsimile in Steevens's 
edition of Shakespeare's works of the mortgage-deed of the 
Blackfriars house of 1612-13, 2 and, besides conforming to that 
style of handwriting in his forged deeds and literary com- 
positions, he inserted copies of the signature on the title-pages 
of many sixteenth-century books, and often added notes in 
the same feigned hand on their margins. Numerous sixteenth- 
century volumes embellished by Ireland in this manner are 
extant, and his forged signatures and marginalia have been 
frequently mistaken for genuine autographs of Shakespeare. 

1 Jordan's Collections, including this fraudulent will of Shakespeare's father, 
were printed privately by J. O. Halliwell-Phillipps in 1864. - See p. 5267. 



SHAKESPEAREAN EORGERIES 367 

But IrelancTs and Jordan's frauds are clumsy compared with 
those that belong to the present century. Most of the works 
Forgeries relating to the biography of Shakespeare or the 
promulga- history of the Elizabethan stage produced by John 
e y o- p a y ne Collier, or under his supervision, between 1835 
others, an d 1 849 are honeycombed with forged references 

1835-1849. to Shakespeare, and many of the forgeries have been 
admitted unsuspectingly into literary history. The chief of these 
forged papers I arrange below in the order of dates that have 
been allotted to them by their manufacturers. 1 

1589 (November). Appeal from the Blackfriars players 
(16 in number) to the Privy Council for favour. Shake- 
speare's name stands twelfth. From the manuscripts 
at Bridgewater House, belonging to the Earl of 
Ellesmere. First printed in Collier's 'New Facts 
regarding the Life of Shakespeare,' 1835. 
1596 (July). List of inhabitants of the Liberty of South- 
wark, Shakespeare's name appearing in the sixth place. 
First printed in Collier's 'Life of Shakespeare,' 1858, 
p. 126. 
1596. Petition of the owners and players of the Blackfriars 
Theatre to the Privy Council in reply to an alleged 
petition of the inhabitants requesting the closing of the 
playhouse. Shakespeare's name is fifth on the list of 
petitioners. This forged paper is in the Public Record 
Office, and was first printed in Collier's ' History of 
English Dramatic Poetry' (1831), vol. i. p. 297, and 
has been constantly reprinted as if it were genuine. 2 

1 Reference has already been made to the character of the manuscript correc- 
tions made by Collier in a copy of the Second Folio of 1632, known as the Perkins 
folio See p. 312, n. 2, supra. The chief authorities on the subject of the Collier for- 
geries are : A n Inquiry into the Genuineness of the Manuscript Corrections in Mr. 
y. Payne Collier's Annotated Shakspcre Folio, 1632, and 0/ certain Shaksperian 
Documents likewise published by Mr. Collier, by N. E. S. A. Hamilton, London, 
i860; A Complete View oj 'the Shakespeare Controversy concerning the Authen- 
ticity and Genuineness of Manuscript Matter affecting the Works and Biography 
of Shakspere, published by y. Payne Collier as the Fruits of his Researches, by 
C. M. Ingleby, LL.D of Trinity College, Cambridge, London, 1861; Catalogue of 
the Manuscripts and Muniments of Alleyns College of God's Gift at Dulwich, by 
George F. Warner, M.A., 1881 ; Notes on the Life of yames Payne Collier, with a 
Complete List of his Works and an Account of such Shakespeare Documents as 
are believed to be spurious, by Henry B. Wheatley. Londin, 1884. 

2 See Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1595-7, p. 310. 



368 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

1596 {circa). A letter signed H. S. (i.e. Henry, Earl of South- 
ampton), addressed to Sir Thomas Egerton, praying 
protection for the players of the Blackfriars Theatre, 
and mentioning Burbage and Shakespeare by name. 
First printed in Collier's ' New Facts.' 

1596 {circa). A list of sharers in the Blackfriars Theatre, 
with the valuation of their property, in which Shake- 
speare is credited with four shares, worth 933/. 6s. Sd. 
This was first printed in Collier's 'New Facts,' 1835, 
p. 6, from the Egerton MSS. at Bridgewater House. 

1602 (August 6). Notice of the performance of ' Othello ' by 
Burbage's 'players' before Queen Elizabeth when on 
a visit to Sir Thomas Egerton, the lord-keeper, at 
Harefield, in a forged account of disbursements by 
Egerton's steward, Arthur Mainwaringe, from the 
manuscripts at Bridgewater House, belonging to the 
Earl of Ellesmere. Printed in Collier's 'New Par- 
ticulars regarding the Works of Shakespeare,' 1836, 
and again in Collier's edition of the ' Egerton Papers, 1 
1840 (Camden Society), pp. 342-3. 

1603 (October 3). Mention of 'Mr. Shakespeare of the 
Globe ' in a letter at Dulwich from Mrs. Alleyn to her 
husband; part of the letter is genuine. First published 
in Collier's ' Memoirs of Edward Alleyn, 1 1841, p. 63. 1 

1604 (April 9). List of the names of eleven players of the 
King's Company fraudulently appended to a genuine 
letter at Dulwich College from the Privy Council 
bidding the Lord Mayor permit performances by the 
King's players. Printed in Collier's 'Memoirs of 
Edward Alleyn,' 1841, p. 68. 2 

1605 (November-December). Forged entries in Master of 
the Revels' account-books ( now at the Public Record 
Office) of performances at Whitehall by the King's play- 
ers of the ' Moor of Venice ' — i.e. ' Othello ' — on Nov- 
ember 1, and of 'Measure for Measure' on December 
26. Printed in Peter Cunningham's 'Extracts from 
the Accounts of the Revels at Court ' (pp. 203-4), pub- 

1 See Warner's Catalogue of Dulwich MSS. pp. 24-6. 
3 Cf. ibid, pp 26-7. 



SHAKESPEAREAN FORGERIES 369 

lished by the Shakespeare Society in 1842. Doubt- 
less based on Malone's trustworthy memoranda (now 
in Bodleian Library) of researches among genuine 
papers formerly at the Audit Office at Somerset 
House. 1 

1607. Notes of performances of ' Hamlet 1 and ' Richard IP 
by the crews of the vessels of the East India Com- 
pany's fleet off Sierra Leone. First printed in ' Narra- 
tives of Voyages towards the North-West, 1496-1631/ 
edited by Thomas Rundall for the Hakluyt Society, 
1849, P- 2 3 r > from what purported to be an exact 
transcript 'in the India Office' of the 'Journal of 
William Keeling, 1 captain of one of the vessels in 
the expedition. Keeling's manuscript journal is still 
at the India Office, but. the leaves that should contain 
these entries are now, and have long been, missing 
from it. 

1609 (January 4). A warrant appointing Robert Daborne, 
William Shakespeare, and others instructors of the 
Children of the Revels. From the Bridgewater 
House MSS. first printed in Collier's 'New Facts, 1 

1835- 

1609 (April 6). List of persons assessed for poor rate in 
South wark, April 6, 1609, in which Shakespeare's 
name appears. First printed in Collier's 'Memoirs of 
Edward Alley n,' 1841, p. 91. The forged paper is at 
Dulwich. 2 

1611 (November). Forged entries in Master of the Revels' 
account-books (now at the Public Record Office) of 
performances at Whitehall by the King's Players of 
the 'Tempest' on November 1, and of the 'Winter's 
Tale 1 on November 5. Printed in Peter Cunningham's 
'Extracts from the Revels Accounts, 1 p. 210. Doubt- 
less based on Malone's trustworthy memoranda of 
researches among genuine papers formerly at the 
Audit Office at Somerset House. 3 

1 See p. 235, n i, supra. 

2 Cf. Warner's Duhvich MSS. pp. 30-1. 

3 See p. 255, n. 1, supra. 

2B 



370 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



II 

THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY 

The apparent contrast between the homeliness of Shakespeare's 
Stratford career and the breadth of observation and knowledge 
displayed in his literary work has evoked the fantastic 
theory that Shakespeare was not the author of the 
literature that passes under his name, and perverse attempts 
have been made to assign his works to his great contemporary, 
Francis Bacon (i 561-1626), the great contemporary prose-writer, 
philosopher, and lawyer. It is argued that Shakespeare's plays 
embody a general omniscience (especially a knowledge of law) 
which was possessed by no contemporary except Bacon ; that 
there are many close parallelisms between passages in Shake- 
speare's and passages in Bacon's works, 1 and that Bacon makes 

1 Most of those that are commonly quoted are phrases in ordinary use by all 
writers of the day. The only point of any interest raised in the argument from 
parallelisms of expression centres about a quotation from Aristotle which Bacon and 
Shakespeare not merely both make, but make in what looks at a first glance to be 
the same erroneous form. Aristotle wrote in his Nicomachean Ethics, i. 8, that 
young men were unfitted for the study of political philosophy. Bacon, in the 
Advancement of Learning (1605), wrote: ' Is not the opinion of Aristotle worthy to 
be regarded wherein he saith that young men are not fit auditors of moral phi- 
losophy?' (bk. ii. p. 255, ed. Kitchin). Shakespeare, about 1603, in Troilus and 
Cressida, II. ii. 166, wrote of ' young men whom Aristotle thought unfit to hear moral 
philosophy. But the alleged error of substituting moral for political philosophy in 
Aristotle's text is more apparent than real. By ' political ' philosophy Aristotle, as 
his context amply shows, meant the ethics of civil society, which are hardly distin- 
guishable from what is commonly called ' morals.' In the summary paraphrase of 
Aristotle's Ethics which was translated into English from the Italian, and published 
in 1547, the passage to which both Shakespeare and Bacon refer is not rendered 
literally, but its general drift is given as a warning that moral philosophy is not a fit 
subject for study by youths who are naturally passionate and headstrong. Such 
an interpretation of Aristotle's language is common among sixteenth and seventeenth 
cen:ury writers. In a French translation of the Ethics by the Comte de Plessis, pub- 



THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY 37 1 

enigmatic references in his correspondence to secret ' recrea- 
tions ' and ' alphabets ' and concealed poems for which his 
alleged employment as a concealed dramatist can alone account. 
Tobv Toby Matthew wrote to Bacon (as Viscount St. 

Matthew's Albans) at an uncertain date after January 1621 : 
letter. < The most prodigious wit that ever I knew of my 

nation and of this side of the sea is of your Lordship's name, 
though he be known by another.' * This unpretending sentence 
is distorted into conclusive evidence that Bacon wrote works 
of commanding excellence under another's name, and among 
them probably Shakespeare's plays. According to the only 
sane interpretation of Matthew's words, his i most prodigious 
wit ' was some Englishman named Bacon whom he met abroad 
— probably a pseudonymous Jesuit like most of Matthew's 
friends. (The real surname of Father Thomas Southwell, who 
was a learned Jesuit domiciled chiefly in the Low Countries, 
was Bacon. He was born in 1592 at Sculthorpe, near Wal- 
singham, Norfolk, being son of Thomas Bacon of that place, and 
he died at Watten in 1637.) 

Joseph C. Hart (U. S. Consul at Santa Cruz, d. 1855), in his 
i Romance of Yachting' (1848), first raised doubts of Shake- 
speare's authorship. There followed in a like temper 

c le ex- 'Who wrote Shakespeare? ' in 'Chambers's Tournal,' 
ponents. 

August 7, 1852, and an article by Miss Delia Bacon 

in ' Putnams' Monthly,' January 1856. On the latter was based 

' The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare unfolded by 

Delia Bacon,' with a neutral preface by Nathaniel Hawthorne, 

London and Boston, 1857. Miss Delia Bacon, who was the first 

to spread abroad a spirit of scepticism respecting the established 

facts of Shakespeare's career, died insane on September 2, 

lished at Paris in 1553, the passage is rendered ' parquoy le ieune enfant n'est suffisant 
auditeur de la science civile; ' and an English commentator (in a manuscript note 
written about 1605 in a copy of the book in the British Museum) turned the sentence 
into English thus: 'Whether a young man may be a fitte scholler of morall philo- 
sophic' In 1622 an Italian essayist, Virgilio Malvezzi, in his preface to his Discorsi 
sopra Cornelio Tacito, has the remark, ' E non e discordante da questa mia 
opinione Aristotele, il qual dice, che i giovani non sono buoni ascultatori delle 
moraW (cf. Spedding, Works of Bacon, i. 739, iii. 440). 

1 Cf. Birch, Letters of Bacon, 1763, p. 392. A foolish suggestion has been made 
that Matthew was referring to Francis Bacon's brother Anthony, who died in 1601; 
Matthew was writing of a man who was alive more than twenty years later. 



372 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

1859. 1 Mr. William Henry Smith, a resident in London, seems 
first to have suggested the Baconian hypothesis in 'Was Lord 
Bacon the author of Shakespeare's plays ? — a letter to Lord 
Ellesmere 1 (1856), which was republished as 'Bacon and 
Shakespeare' (1857). The most learned exponent of this 
strange theory was Nathaniel Holmes, an American lawyer, 
who published at New York in 1866 'The Authorship of the 
Plays attributed to Shakespeare, 1 a monument of misapplied 
ingenuity (4th ed. 1886, 2 vols.). Bacon's ' Promus of Formu- 
laries and Elegancies, 1 a commonplace book in Bacon's hand- 
writing in the British Museum (London, 1883), was first edited 
by Mrs. Henry Pott, a voluminous advocate of the Baconian 
theory ; it contained many words and phrases common to the 
works of Bacon and Shakespeare, and Mrs. Pott pressed the 
argument from parallelisms of expression to its extremest 
limits. The Baconian theory has found its widest acceptance 
in America. There it achieved its wildest manifestation in the 
book called ' The Great Cryptogram : Francis Bacon's 
its vogue Cypher in the so-called Shakespeare Plays ' (Chicago 
and London, 1887, 2 vols.), which was the work of 
Mr. Ignatius Donnelly of Hastings, Minnesota. The author 
pretended to have discovered among Bacon's papers a numerical 
cypher which enabled him to pick out letters appearing at certain 
intervals in the pages of Shakespeare's First Folio, and the 
selected letters formed words and sentences categorically stating 
that Bacon was author of the plays. Many refutations have 
been published of Mr. Donnelly's arbitrary and baseless con- 
tention. 

A Bacon Society was founded in London in 1885 to develop 
and promulgate the unintelligible theory, and it inaugurated a 
Extent of magazine (named since May 1893 ' Baconiana ') . A 
the litera- quarterly periodical also called ' Baconiana,' and 
ture - issued in the same interest, was established at 

Chicago in 1892. 'The Bibliography of the Shakespeare-Bacon 
Controversy' by W. H. Wyman, Cincinnati, 1884, gives the 
titles of two hundred and fifty-five books or pamphlets on both 
sides of the subject, published since 1848 ; the list was continued 
during 1886 in ' Shakespeariana,' a monthly journal published 

1 Cf. Life by Theodore Bacon, London, 1888. 



THE BACON-SHAKESPEARE CONTROVERSY 373 

at Philadelphia, and might now be extended to fully twice its 
original number. 

The abundance of the contemporary evidence attesting 
Shakespeare's responsibility for the works published under his 
name gives the Baconian theory no rational right to a hearing ; 
while such authentic examples of Bacons effort to write verse 
as survive prove beyond all possibility of contradiction that, 
great as he was as a prose-writer and a philosopher, he was 
incapable of penning any of the poetry assigned to Shake- 
speare. Defective knowledge and illogical or casuistical argu- 
ment alone render any other conclusion possible. 



374 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



III 



THE YOUTHFUL CAREER OF THE EARL OF 
SOUTHAMPTON 

From the dedicatory epistles addressed by Shakespeare to the 
Earl of Southampton in the opening pages of his two narrative 
poems, 'Venus and Adonis 1 (1593) and 'Lucrece' 
ton and 0594V f rom tne account given by Sir William 
Shake- D'Avenant, and recorded by Nicholas Rowe, of the 

speare. earl's liberal bounty to the poet, 2 and, from the 

language of the sonnets, it is abundantly clear that Shakespeare 
enjoyed very friendly relations with Southampton from the time 
when his genius was nearing its maturity. No contemporary 
document or tradition gives the faintest suggestion that Shake- 
speare was the friend or protege of any man of rank other than 
Southampton ; and the student of Shakespeare's biography has 
reason to ask for some information respecting him who enjoyed 
the exclusive distinction of serving Shakespeare as his patron. 

Southampton was a patron worth cultivating. Both his 
parents came of the New Nobility, and enjoyed vast wealth. 
His father's father was Lord Chancellor under Henry VIII, 
and when the monasteries were dissolved, although he was 
faithful to the old religion, he was granted rich estates in 

Hampshire, including; the Abbeys of Titchfield and 
Parentage 

Beaulieu in the New Forest. He was created Earl 

of Southampton early in Edward VI's reign, and, dying shortly 
afterwards, was succeeded by his only son, the father of Shake- 
speare's friend. The second Earl loved magnificence in his 
household. k He was highly reverenced and favoured of all that 
were of his own rank, and bravely attended and served by the 

1 See pp. 4, 77, 127. 2 See p. 126. 



THE YOUTHFUL CAREER OF SOUTHAMPTON 375 

best gentlemen of those countries wherein he lived. His muster- 
roll never consisted of four lacqueys and a coachman, but of a 
whole troop of at least a hundred well-mounted gentlemen 
and yeomen.' 1 The second Earl remained a Catholic, like his 
father, and a chivalrous avowal of sympathy with Mary Queen 
of Scots procured him a term of imprisonment in the year 
preceding his distinguished son's birth. At a youthful age 
he married a lady of fortune, Mary Browne, daughter of the 
first Viscount Montague, also a Catholic. Her portrait, now 
at Welbeck, was painted in her early married days, and 
shows regularly formed features beneath bright auburn hair. 
Two sons and a daughter were the issue of the union. Shake- 
speare's friend, the second son, was borne at her father's 

residence, Cowdray House, near Midhurst, on 
Oct6°iq7^ October 6, 1573. He was thus Shakespeare's junior 

by nine years and a half. 'A goodly boy, God bless 
him ! ' exclaimed the gratified father, writing of his birth to a 
friend. 2 But the father barely survived the boy's infancy. He 
died at the early age of thirty-five — two days before the child's 
eighth birthday. The elder son was already dead. Thus, on 
October 4, 1581, the second and only surviving son became 
third Earl of Southampton, and entered on his great inheri- 
tance. 3 

As was customary in the case of an infant peer, the little 
Earl became a royal ward — ' a child of state ' — and Lord 
Burghley, the Prime Minister, acted as the boy's guardian in 
the Queen's behalf. Burghley had good reason to be satisfied 

with his ward's intellectual promise. ' He spent,' 

wrote a contemporary, ' his childhood and other 
younger terms in the study of good letters.' At the age of 
twelve, in the autumn of 1585, he was admitted to St. John's 
College, Cambridge, ' the sweetest nurse of knowledge in all 
the University.' Southampton breathed easily the cultured 

1 Gervase Markham, Honour in his Perfection, 1624. 

- Loseley MSS. ed. A. J. Kempe, p. 240. 

3 His mother, after thirteen years of widowhood, married in 1594 Sir Thomas 
Heneage, Vice-Chamberlain of Queen Elizabeth's household; but he died within a 
year, and in 1596 she took a third husband, Sir William Hervey, who distinguished 
himself in military service in Ireland and was created a peer as Lord Hervey by 
James I. 



376 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

atmosphere. Next summer he sent his guardian, Burghley, an 
essay in Ciceronian Latin on the somewhat cynical text that 
• All men are moved to the pursuit of virtue by the hope of 
reward.' The argument, if unconvincing, is precocious. 'Every 
man,' the boy tells us, ' no matter how well or how ill endowed 
with the graces of humanity, whether in the enjoyment of great 
honour or condemned to obscurity, experiences that yearning 
for glory which alone begets virtuous endeavour. 1 The paper, 
still preserved at Hatfield, is a model of caligraphy ; every 
letter is shaped with delicate regularity, and betrays a refine- 
ment most uncommon in boys of thirteen. 1 Southampton re- 
mained at the University for some two years, graduating M.A. 
at sixteen, in 1589. Throughout his after life he cherished for 
his college ' great love and affection. 1 

Before leaving Cambridge, Southampton entered his name 
at Gray's Inn. Some knowledge of law was deemed needful in 
one who was to control a landed property that was not only 
large already but likely to grow. 2 Meanwhile he was sedu- 
lously cultivating his literary tastes. He took into his 
* pay and patronage ' John Florio, the well-known author and 
Italian tutor, and was soon, according to Florio's testimony, as 
thoroughly versed in Italian as i teaching or learning 1 could 
make him. 

• When he was young, 1 wrote a later admirer, ; no ornament 
of youth was wanting in him ; 1 and it was naturally to the 
Court that his friends sent him at an early age to display his 
varied graces. He can hardly have been more than seventeen 
when he was presented to his Sovereign. She showed him 
kindly notice, and the Earl of Essex, her brilliant favourite, 
acknowledged his fascination. Thenceforth Essex displayed in 

1 By kind permission of the Marquis of Salisbury I lately copied out this essay 
at Hatfield. 

2 In 1588 his brother-in-law, Thomas Arundel, afterwards first Lord Arundel or 
Wardour (husband of his only sister, Mary), petitioned Lord Burghley to grant him 
an additional tract of the New Forest about his house at Beaulieu. Although in his 
' nonage,' Arundel wrote, the Earl was by no means ' of the smallest hope.' Arundel, 
with almost prophetic insight, added that the Earl of Pembroke was Southampton's 
' most feared rival ' in the competition for the land in question. Arundel was refer- 
ring to the father of that third Earl of Pembroke who, despite the absence of evi- 
dence, has been described as Shakespeare's friend of the sonnets (cf. Calendar of 
Hatfield MSS. iii. 365). 



THE YOUTHFUL CAREER OF SOUTHAMPTON 377 

his welfare a brotherly interest which proved in course of time 
a very doubtful blessing. 

While still a boy, Southampton entered with as much 
zest into the sports and dissipations of his fellow-courtiers as 
Recogni- into their literary and artistic pursuits. At tennis, in 
tion of jousts and tournaments, he achieved distinction ; 

ton's vouth- n o r was he a stranger to the delights of gambling at 
ful beauty, primero. In 1592, when he was in his eighteenth 
year, he was recognised as the most handsome and accom- 
plished of all the young lords who frequented the royal presence. 
In the autumn of that year Elizabeth paid Oxford a visit in 
state. Southampton was in the throng of noblemen who bore 
her company. In a Latin poem describing the brilliant cere- 
monial, which was published at the time at the University Press, 
eulogy was lavished without stint on all the Queen's attendants ; 
but the academic poet declared that Southampton's personal 
attractions exceeded those of any other in the royal train. 'No 
other youth who was present,' he wrote, l was more beautiful 
than this prince of Hampshire {quo non formosior alter affuit), 
nor more distinguished in the arts of learning, although as yet 
tender down scarce bloomed on his cheek.' The last words 
testify to Southampton's boyish appearance. 1 Next year it was 
rumoured that his ' external grace ' was to receive signal recog- 
nition by his admission, despite his juvenility, to the Order of 
the Garter. ' There be no Knights of the Garter new chosen as 
yet,' wrote a well-informed courtier on May 3, 1593, 'but there 
were four nominated.' 2 Three were eminent public servants, 
but first on the list stood the name of young Southampton. The 
purpose did not take effect, but the compliment of nomination 
was, at his age, without precedent outside the circle of the 
Sovereign's kinsmen. On November 17, 1595, he appeared in 
the lists set up in the Queen's presence in honour of the 

x Cf. Apollinis et Mzisarum Eu/criKa Ei5uA.Aia, Oxford, 1592, reprinted in 
Elizabethan Oxford (Oxford Historical Society), edited by Charles Plummer, xxix. 
294: 

Post hunc {i.e. Earl of Essex) insequitur clara. de stirpe Dynasta, 
omes lure suo diues quem South-Hamptonia magnum 

* ' Vendicat heroem; quo non formosior alter 

. Affuit, aut docta iuuenis prsestantior arte: 

tonice. _ ' . . j , 

Ora licet tenera vix dum lanugme vernent. 

2 Historical MSS. Commission, 7th Report (Appendix), p. 521^. 



378 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

thirty-seventh anniversary of her accession. The poet George 
Peele pictured in blank verse the gorgeous scene, and likened 
the Earl of Southampton to that ancient type of chivalry, Bevis 
of Southampton, so ' valiant in arms,' so i gentle and debonair,' 
did he appear to all beholders. 1 

But clouds were rising on this sunlit horizon. Southampton, 
a wealthy peer without brothers or uncles, was the only male 
representative of his house. A lawful heir was essential to the 
entail of his great possessions. Early marriages — child-mar- 
riages — were in vogue in all ranks of society, and South- 
ampton's mother and guardian regarded matrimony at a 

tender age as especially incumbent on him in view 
S C marry Ce of his rich nerita g e - When he was seventeen 

Burghley accordingly offered him a wife in the 
person of his granddaughter, Lady Elizabeth Vere, eldest 
daughter of his daughter Anne and of the Earl of Oxford. The 
Countess of Southampton approved the match, and told 
Burghley that her son was not averse from it. Her wish was 
father to the thought. Southampton declined to marry to 
order, and, to the confusion of his friends, was still a bachelor 
when he came of age in 1594. Nor even then did there seem 
much prospect of his changing his condition. He was in 
some ways as young for his years in inward disposition as in 
outward appearance. Although gentle and amiable in most 
relations of life, he could be childishly self-willed and impulsive, 
and outbursts of anger involved him, at Court and elsewhere, in 
many petty quarrels which were with difficulty settled without 
bloodshed. Despite his rank and wealth, he was consequently 
accounted by many ladies of far too uncertain a temper 
to sustain marital responsibilities with credit. Lady Bridget 
Manners, sister of his friend the Earl of Rutland, was in 
1594 looking to matrimony for means of release from the 
servitude of a lady-in-waiting to the Queen. Her guardian 
suggested that Southampton or the Earl of Bedford, who was 
intimate with Southampton and exactly of his age, would be an 
eligible suitor. Lady Bridget dissented. Southampton and 
his friend were, she objected, 'so young,' 'fantastical,' and 
volatile ('so easily carried away') that should ill fortune 

1 Peek's Anglorum Ferice. 



THE YOUTHFUL CAREER OF SOUTHAMPTON 379 

befall her mother, who was 'her only stay, 1 she 'doubted 
their carriage of themselves. 1 She spoke, she said, from 
observation. 1 

In 1595, at two-and-twenty, Southampton justified Lady 
Bridget's censure by a public proof of his fallibility. The 
Intrigue fair mistress Vernon (first cousin of the Earl of 
beth Ver^" Essex), a passionate beauty of the Court, cast her 
non. spell on him. Her virtue was none too stable, and 

in September the scandal spread that Southampton was court- 
ing her 'with too much familiarity.' 

The entanglement with ' his fair mistress ' opened a new 
chapter in Southampton's career, and life's tempests began in 
earnest. Either to free himself from his mistress's toils, or to 
divert attention from his intrigue, he in 1596 withdrew from 
Court and sought sterner occupation. Despite his mistress's 
lamentations, which the Court gossips duly chronicled, he played 
a part with his friend Essex, in the military and naval expedition 
to Cadiz in 1596, and in that to the Azores in 1597. He devel- 
oped a martial ardour which brought him renown, and Mars 
(his admirers said) vied with Mercury for his allegiance. He 
travelled on the Continent, and finally, in 1598, he accepted a 
subordinate place in the suite of the Queen's Secretary, Sir 
Robert Cecil, who was going on an embassy to 
hf «o8 Se Paris - But Mistress Vernon was still fated to be his 
evil genius, and Southampton learnt while in Paris 
.that her condition rendered marriage essential to her decaying 
reputation. He hurried to London and, yielding his own 
scruples to her entreaties, secretly made her his wife during the 
few days he stayed in this country. The step was full of peril. 
To marry a lady of the Court without the Queen's consent 
infringed a prerogative of the Crown by which Elizabeth set 
exaggerated store. 

1 Cal. of the Duke of Rutland's MSS. i. 321. Barnabe Barnes, who was one of 
Southampton's poetic admirers, addressed a crude sonnet to ' the Beautiful Lady, The 
Lady Bridget Manners,' in 1593, at the same time as he addressed one to South- 
ampton. Both are appended to Barnes's collection of sonnets and other poems 
entitled Parthenophe and Parthenophil (cf. Arber's Garner, v. 486). Barnes 
apostrophises Lady Bridget as ' fairest and sweetest' 

Of all those sweet and fair flowers, 

The pride of chaste Cynthia's {i.e. Queen Elizabeth's] rich crown. 



380 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

The story of Southampton's marriage was soon public prop- 
erty. His wife quickly became a mother, and when he crossed 
the Channel a few weeks later to revisit her he was received by 
pursuivants, who had the Queen's orders to carry him to the Fleet 
prison. For the time his career was ruined. Although he was 
soon released from gaol, all avenues to the Queen's favour were 
closed to him. He sought employment in the wars in Ireland, 
but high command was denied him. Helpless and hopeless, he 
late in 1600 joined Essex, another fallen favourite, in fomenting 
a rebellion in London, in order to regain by force the positions 
each had forfeited. The attempt at insurrection failed, and 
the conspirators stood their trial on a capital charge of treason 
Imprison- on February 19, 1600-1. Southampton was con- 
ment, demned to die, but the Queen's Secretary pleaded 

1601-3. with her that • the poor young Earl, merely for the 

love of Essex, had been drawn into this action,' and his punish- 
ment was commuted to imprisonment for life. Further mitiga- 
tion was not to be looked for while the Queen lived. But Essex, 
Southampton's friend, had been James's sworn ally. The first 
act of James I as monarch of England was to set Southampton 
free (April 10. 1603). After a confinement of more than two 
years, Southampton resumed, under happier auspices, his place 
at Court. 

Southampton's later career does not directly concern the 
student of Shakespeare's biography. After Shakespeare had 
Later congratulated Southampton on his liberty in his 

career. Sonnet cvii., there is no trace of further relations 

between them, although there is no reason to doubt that they 
remained friends to the end. Southampton on his release from 
prison was immediately installed a Knight of the Garter, and 
was appointed Governor of the Isle of Wight, while an Act of 
Parliament relieved him of all the disabilities incident to his 
conviction of treason. He was thenceforth a prominent figure 
in Court festivities. He twice danced a correnta with the 
Queen at the magnificent entertainment given at Whitehall on 
August 19, 1604, in honour of the Constable of Castile, the 
special ambassador of Spain, who had come to sign a treaty of 
peace between his Sovereign and James I. 1 But home politics 

1 See p. 233, n. 2. 



THE YOUTHFUL CAREER OF SOUTHAMPTON. 38 1 

proved no congenial field for the exercise of Southampton's 
energies. Quarrels with fellow-courtiers continued to jeopardise 
his fortunes. With Sir Robert Cecil, with Philip Herbert, Earl of 
Montgomery, and with the Duke of Buckingham he had violent 
disputes. It was in the schemes for colonising the New World 
that Southampton found an outlet for his impulsive activity. 
He helped to equip expeditions to Virginia, and acted as 
treasurer of the Virginia Company. The map of the country 
commemorates his labours as a colonial pioneer. In his 
honour were named Southampton Hundred, Hampton River, 
and Hampton Roads in Virginia. Finally, in the summer of 
1624, at the age of fifty-one, Southampton, with characteristic 
spirit, took command of a troop of English volunteers which 
was raised to aid the Elector Palatine, husband of James I's 
daughter Elizabeth, in his struggle with the Emperor and the 
Catholics of Central Europe. With him went his eldest son, 
Lord Wriothesley. Both on landing in the Low Countries were 
attacked by fever. The younger man succumbed at once. The 
Earl regained sufficient strength to accompany his son's body 
Death on to Bergen-op-Zoom, but there, on November 10, he 
Nov. io, himself died of a lethargy. Father and son were 
1624. both buried in the chancel of the church of Titch- 

field, Hampshire, on December 28. Southampton thus outlived 
Shakespeare by more than eight years. 



382 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



IV 

THE EARL OF SOUTHAMPTON AS A LITERARY 
PATRON 

Southampton's close relations with men of letters of his 
time give powerful corroboration of the theory that he was the 
patron whom Shakespeare commemorated in the sonnets. From 
earliest to latest manhood — throughout the dissipations of 
Court life, amid the torments that his intrigue cost him, in the 
distractions of war and travel — the Earl never ceased to cherish 
the passion for literature which was implanted in him in boy- 
hood. His devotion to his old college, St. John's, is charac- 
teristic. When a new library was in course of construction 
Southamp- there during the closing years of his life, Southamp- 
ton scollec- ton collected books to the value of 160/. wherewith 
tion of '..-.'., . 

books. to furnish it. This * monument of love,' as the 

College authorities described the benefaction, may still be seen 
on the shelves of the College library. The gift largely consisted 
of illuminated manuscripts — books of hours, legends of the 
saints, and mediaeval chronicles. Southampton caused his son 
to be educated at St. John's, and his wife expressed to the 
tutors the hope that the boy would ' imitate ' his father ' in his 
love to learning and to them.' 

Even the State papers and business correspondence in' 
which Southampton's career is traced are enlivened by refer- 
ences to his literary interests. Especially refreshing are the 
active signs vouchsafed there of his sympathy with the great 
References birth of English drama. It was with plays that 
in his let- he joined other noblemen in 1598 in entertaining his 
poems and chief, Sir Robert Cecil, on the eve of the departure 
plays. for Paris of that embassy in which Southampton 

served Cecil as a secretary. In July following Southampton 
contrived to enclose in an official despatch from Paris ' certain 
songs' which he was anxious that Sir Robert Sidney, a friend 



SOUTHAMPTON AS A LITERARY PATRON 383 

of literary tastes, should share his delight in reading. Twelve 
months later, while Southampton was in Ireland, a letter to him 
from the Countess attested that current literature was an every- 
day topic of their private talk. 'All the news I can send you,' 
she wrote to her husband, ' that I think will make you merry, is 
that I read in a letter from London that Sir John FalstafF is, by 
his mistress Dame Pintpot, made father of a goodly miller's thumb 
— a boy that's all head and very little body ; but this is a secret.' 1 
This cryptic sentence proves on the part of both Earl and 
Countess familiarity with Falstaff's adventures in Shakespeare's 
' Henry IV,' where the fat knight apostrophised Mrs. Quickly 
as 'good pint pot' (pt. 1. ii. 4, 443). Who the acquaintances 
were about whom the Countess jested thus lightly does not 
appear, but that Sir John, the father of ' the boy that was all 
head and very little body,' was a playful allusion to Sir John's 
creator is by no means beyond the bounds of possibility. In 
the letters of Sir Toby Matthew, two of which were written very 
early in the seventeenth century (although first published in 
1660), the sobriquet of Sir John FalstafF seems to have been be- 
stowed on Shakespeare : 'As that excellent author Sir John Fal- 
stafF sayes, " what for your businesse, news, device, foolerie, and 
libertie, I never dealt better since I was a man." ' 2 

When, after leaving Ireland, Southampton spent the autumn 
of 1599 in London, it was recorded that he and his friend Lord 
Rutland ' come not to Court ' but ' pass away the time merely in 

going to plays every day.' 3 It seems that the fascina- 
the S theatre t * on tnat *^ e drama had for Southampton and his 

friends led them to exaggerate the influence that it 
was capable of exerting on the emotions of the multitude. South- 
ampton and Essex in February 1601 requisitioned and paid for 
the revival of Shakespeare's ' Richard II ' at the Globe Theatre 
on the day preceding that fixed for their insurrection, in the hope 
that the play-scene of the deposition of a king might excite 
the citizens of London to countenance their rebellious design. 4 
Imprisonment sharpened Southampton's zest for the theatre. 

1 The original letter is at Hatfield. The whole is printed in Historical Manu- 
scripts Commission, 3rd Rep. p. 145. 

2 The quotation is a confused reminiscence of Falstaff's remarks in 1 Henry IV. 
II. iv. The last nine words are an exact quotation of lines 190-1. 

3 Sidney Papers, ii. 132. 4 See p. 175. 



384 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Within a year of his release from the Tower in 1603 he enter- 
tained Queen Anne of Denmark at his house in the Strand, 
and Burbage and his fellow-players, one of whom was Shake- 
speare, were bidden to present the ' old ' play of ' Love's Labour's 
Lost, 1 whose ' wit and mirth ' were calculated ' to please her 
Majesty exceedingly. 1 

But these are merely accidental testimonies to Southampton's 
literary predilections. It is in literature itself, not in the prosaic 
records of his political or domestic life, that the amplest proofs 
survive of his devotion to letters. From the hour that, as a 
handsome and accomplished lad, he joined the Court and made 

London his chief home, authors acknowledged his 
HkJrT " a PP rec i at i° n of literary effort of almost every quality 

and form. He had in his Italian tutor Florio, whose 
circle of acquaintance included all men of literary reputation, a 
mentor who allowed no work of promise to escape his observa- 
tion. Every note in the scale of adulation was sounded in 
Southampton's honour in contemporary prose and verse. Soon 
after the publication, in April 1593, of Shakespeare's 'Venus 
and Adonis, 1 with its salutation of Southampton, a more youth- 
Barnabe ful apprentice to the poet's craft, Barnabe Barnes, 

Barnes s confided to a published sonnet of unrestrained 

sonnet, . r . . 

I 593- fervour his conviction that Southampton's eyes — 

'those heavenly lamps' — were the only sources of true poetic 

inspiration. The sonnet, which is superscribed 'to the Right 

Noble and Virtuous Lord, Henry, Earl of Southampton,' runs: 

Receive, sweet Lord, with thy thrice sacred hand 
(Which sacred Muses make their instrument) 
These worthless leaves, which I to thee present, 

(Sprung from a rude and unmanured land) 

That with your countenance graced, they may withstand 
Hundred-eyed Envy's rough encounterment, 
Whose patronage can give encouragement 

To scorn back-wounding Zoilus his band. 

Vouchsafe, right virtuous Lord, with gracious eyes — 

Those heavenly lamps which give the Muses light, 

Which give and take in course that holy fire — 

To view my Muse with your judicial sight : 

Whom, when time shall have taught, by flight, to rise 

Shall to thy virtues, of much worth, aspire. 



SOUTHAMPTON AS A LITERARY PATRON 385 

Next year a writer of greater power, Tom Nash, betrayed 
little less enthusiasm when dedicating to the Earl his masterly 
T essay in romance, 'The Life of Jack Wilton. 1 He 

Nash's describes Southampton, who was then scarcely of 

addresses. a g e? as » a dear i 0V er and cherisher as well of the 
lovers of poets as of the poets themselves. 1 'A new brain, 1 he 
exclaims, ' a new wit, a new style, a new soul, will I get me, to 
canonise your name to posterity, if in this my first attempt I am 
not taxed of presumption. 11 Although 'Jack Wilton 1 was the 
first book Nash formally dedicated to Southampton, it is probable 
that Nash had made an earlier bid for the earl's patronage. In 
a digression at the close of his 'Pierce Pennilesse ? he grows 
eloquent in praise of one whom he entitles ' the matchless image 
of honour and magnificent rewarder of vertue, Jove's eagle- 
borne Ganimede, thrice noble Amintas. 1 In a sonnet addressed 
to ' this renowed lord, 1 who ' draws all hearts to his love, 1 Nash 
expresses regret that the great poet, Edmund Spenser, had omitted 
to celebrate ' so special a pillar of nobility ' in the series of adula- 
tory sonnets prefixed to the ' Faerie Queen ' ; and in the last lines 
of his sonnet Nash suggests that Spenser suppressed the noble- 
man's name 

Because few words might not comprise thy fame. 2 

1 See Nash's Works, ed. Grosart, v. 6. The whole passage runs: ' How wel or 
ill I haue done in it I am ignorant : (the eye that sees round about it selfe sees not 
into it selfe) : only your Honours applauding encouragement hath power to make me 
arrogant. Incomprehensible is the height of your spirit both in heroical resolution 
and. matters of conceit. Vnrepriuebly perisheth that booke whatsoeuer to wast 
paper, which on the diamond rocke of your judgement disasterly chanceth to be 
shipwrackt. A dere louer and cherisher you are, as well of the louers of Poets, as 
of Poets them selues. Amongst their sacred number I dare not ascribe my selfe, 
though now and then I speak English : that smal braine I haue, to no further vse I 
conuert saue to be kinde to my frends, and fatall to my enemies. A new brain, a 
new wit, a new stile, a new soule will I get mee to canonize your name to posteritie, 
if in this my first attempt I am not taxed of presumption. Of your gracious fauor 
I despaire not, for I am not altogether Fames out-cast. . . . Your Lordship is the 
large spreading branch of renown, from whence these my idle leaues seeke to deriue 
their whole nourishing.' 

2 The complimentary title of ' Amyntas,' which was naturalised in English 
literature by Abraham Fraunce's two renderings of Tasso's A minta — one direct from 
the Italian and the other from the Latin version of Thomas Watson — was apparently 
bestowed by Spenser on the Earl of Derby in his Colin Clouts come Home again 
(1595); and some critics assume that Nash referred in Pierce Pennilesse to that 
nobleman rather than to Southampton. But Nash's comparison of his paragon 
to Ganymede suggests extreme youth, and Southampton was nineteen in 1592, 

2 C 



386 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Southampton was beyond doubt the nobleman in question. 
It is certain, too, that the Earl of Southampton was among 
the young men for whom Nash, in hope of gain, as he admitted, 
penned 'amorous villanellos and qui passas. 1 One of the least 
reputable of these efforts of Nash survives in an obscene love- 
poem entitled ' The Choosing of Valentines,' which may be 
dated in 1595. This was not only dedicated to Southampton 
in a prefatory sonnet, but in an epilogue, again in the form of a 
sonnet, Nash addressed his young patron as his 'friend. 11 

while Derby was thirty-three. ' Amyntas,' as a complimentary designation, was 
widely used by the poets, and was not applied exclusively to any one patron of 
letters. It was bestowed on the poet Watson by Richard Barnfield and by other 
of Watson's panegyrists. 

*Two manuscript copies of the poem, which has not been printed, are extant 
— one among the Rawlinson poetical manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, and the 
other among the manuscripts in the Inner Temple Library (No. 538). Mr. John S. 
Farmer has kindly sent me transcripts of the opening and concluding dedicatory 
sonnets. The first, which is inscribed ' to the right honourable the Lord Southamp- 
ton],' runs: 

Pardon, sweete flower of matchles poetrye, 

And fairest bud the red rose euer bare, 
Although my muse, devorst from deeper care, 

Presents thee with a wanton Elegie. 
Ne blame my verse of loose unchastitye 

For painting forth the things that hidden are, 
Since all men act what 1 in speeche declare, 

Onlie induced with varietie. 
Complaints and praises, every one can write, 

And passion out their pangs in statlie rimes; 
But of loues pleasures none did euer write, 
That have succeeded in theis latter times. 
Accept of it, deare Lord, in gentle parte, 
And better lines ere long shall honor thee. 
The poem follows in about three hundred lines, and the manuscript ends with a 
second sonnet addressed by Nash to his patron : 

Thus hath my penne presum'd to please my friend. 

Oh mightst thou lykewise please Apollo's eye. 
No, Honor brookes no such impietie, 

Yet Ovid's wanton muse did not offend. 
He is the fountaine whence my streames do fiowe — 

Forgive me if I speak as I was taught; 
Alike to women, utter all I knowe, 

As longing to unlade so bad a fraught. 
My mynde once purg'd of such lascivious witt, 

With purifide words and hallowed verse, 
Thy praises in large volumes shall rehearse. 

That better maie thy grauer view befitt. 
Meanwhile ytt rests, you smile at what I write 
Or for attempting banish me your sight. 

Tho. Nash. 



SOUTHAMPTON AS A LITERARY PATRON 387 

Meanwhile, in 1595, the versatile Gervase Markham in- 
scribed to Southampton in a sonnet, his patriotic poem on Sir 
M , Richard GrenvihVs glorious fight off the Azores, 

ham's son- Markham was not content to acknowledge with Barnes 
n et . I 595- the inspiriting force of his patron's eyes, but with 
blasphemous temerity asserted that the sweetness of his lips, 
which stilled the music of the spheres, delighted the ear of 
Almighty God. Markham's sonnet runs somewhat haltingly 
thus: 

Thou glorious laurel of the Muses' hill, 

Whose eyes doth crown the most victorious pen, 
Bright lamp of virtue, in whose sacred skill, 

Lives all the bliss of ear-enchanting men, 
From graver subjects of thy grave assays, 

Bend thy courageous thoughts unto these lines — 
The grave from whence my humble Muse doth raise 
True honour's spirit in her rough designs — 
And when the stubborn stroke of my harsh song 
Shall seasonless glide through Almighty ears 
Vouchsafe to sweet it with thy blessed tongue 
Whose well-tuned sound stills music in the spheres ; 

So shall my tragic lays be blest by thee 

And from thy lips suck their eternity. 



Subsequently Florio, in associating the Earl's name with his 
great Italian-English dictionary — the ' World of Words 1 — 
Florio's more soberly defined the Earl's place in the republic 
address, of letters when he wrote : 'As to me and many more 
I 59 8 - the glorious and gracious sunshine of your honour 

hath infused light and life. 1 

The most notable contribution to this chorus of praise 
is to be found, as I have already shown, in Shakespeare^ 
'Sonnets. 1 ' The same note of eulogy was sounded by men of 
letters until Southampton's death. When he was released 
The con- from prison on James Ps accession in April 1603, 
gratula- hjg praises in poets 1 mouths were especially abun- 
poets in dant. Not only was that grateful incident cele- 
1603. brated by Shakespeare in what is probably the 

latest of his sonnets (No. cvii.), but Samuel Daniel and John 
Davies of Hereford offered the Earl congratulation in more 



388 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

prolonged strains. Daniel addressed to Southampton many 
lines like these : 

The world had never taken so full note 

Of what thou art, hadst thou not been undone : 

And only thy affliction hath begot 

More fame than thy best fortunes could have won ; 

For ever by adversity are wrought 
The greatest works of admiration ; 

And all the fair examples of renown 

Out of distress and misery are grown . . . 

Only the best-compos'd and worthiest hearts 

God sets to act the hard'st and constant'st parts. 1 

Davies was more jubilant : 

Now wisest men with mirth do seem stark mad, 
And cannot choose — their hearts are all so glad. 
Then let's be merry in our God and King, 
That made us merry, being ill bestead. 
Southampton, up thy cap to Heaven fling, 
And on the viol there sweet praises sing, 
For he is come that grace to all doth bring. 2 

Many like praises, some of later date, by Henry Locke (or 
Lok), George Chapman, Joshua Sylvester, Richard Braithwaite, 
George Wither, Sir John Beaumont, and others could be 
quoted. Beaumont, on Southampton's death, wrote an elegy 
which panegyrises him in the varied capacities of warrior, 
councillor, courtier, father, and husband. But it is as a literary 
patron that Beaumont insists that he chiefly deserves remem- 
brance : 

I keep that glory last which is the best, 
The love of learning which he oft expressed 
In conversation, and respect to those 
Who had a name in arts, in verse or prose. 



1 Daniel's Certazne Epistles, 1603; see Daniel's Works, ed. Grosart, i. 216 seq. 

2 See Preface to Davies's Microcosvios, 1603 (Davies's Works, ed. Grosart, i. 14) . 
At the end of Davies's Microcosmos there is also a congratulatory sonnet addressed 
to Southampton on his liberation (ib. p. 96), beginning: 

Welcome to shore, unhappy-happy Lord, 
From the deep seas of danger and distress. 
There like thou wast to be thrown overboard 
In every storm of discontentedness. 



SOUTHAMPTON AS A LITERARY PATRON 389 

To the same effect are some twenty poems which were pub- 
lished in 1624, just after Southampton's death, in a volume en- 

„, . titled ' Teares of the Isle of Wight, shed on the Tombe 

Elegies on . . 

Southamp- of their most noble valorous and loving Captaine and 

ton - Governour, the right honorable Henrie, Earl of South- 

ampton.' The keynote is struck in the opening stanza of the 
first poem by one Francis Beale : 

Ye famous poets of the southern isle, 
Strain forth the raptures of your tragic muse, 
And with your Laureate pens come and compile 
The praises due to this great Lord : peruse 
His globe of worth, and eke his virtues brave, 
Like learned Maroes at Mecaenas's grave. 



390 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



THE TRUE HISTORY OF THOMAS THORPE 

AND 'MR. W. H y 

In 1598 Francis Meres enumerated among Shakespeare's best 
known works his 'sugar'd sonnets among his private friends. 1 
None of Shakespeare's sonnets are known to have been in 
print when Meres wrote, but they were doubtless in circulation 
in manuscript. In 1599 two of them were printed for the first 

time by the piratical publisher, William Jaggard, in 
cation of tne opening pages of the first edition of ' The 
the sonnets Passionate Pilgrim. 1 On January 3, 1 599-1 600. 

Eleazar Edgar, a publisher of small account, obtained 
a license for the publication of a work bearing the title, 'A 
Booke called Amours by J. D., with certein other Sonnetes by 
W. S. 1 No book answering this description is extant. In 
any case it is doubtful if Edgars venture concerned Shake- 
speared i Sonnets. 1 It is more probable that his 'W. S. 1 was 
William Smith, who had published a collection of sonnets 
entitled 'Chloris 1 in 1596. 1 On May 20, 1609, a license for the 
publication of Shakespeare^ l Sonnets ' was granted by the 
Stationers 1 Company to a publisher named Thomas Thorpe, 
and shortly afterwards the complete collection as they have 
reached us was published by Thorpe for the first time. To 

1 ' Amours of J. D.' were doubtless sonnets by Sir John Davies, of which only a 
few have reached us. There is no ground for J. P. Collier's suggestion that J. D. 
was a misprint for M. D., i.e. Michael Drayton, who gave the first edition of his 
sonnets in 1594 the title of Amours. That word was in France the common 
designation of collections of sonnets (cf. Drayton's Poems, ed. Collier, Roxburghe 
Club, p. xxv). 



THOMAS THORPE AND 'MR. W. H.* 39 1 

the volume Thorpe prefixed a dedication in the following 
terms : 

TO THE ONLIE BEGETTER OF 

THESE INSUING SONNETS 

MR. W. H., ALL HAPPINESSE 

AND THAT ETERNITIE 

PROMISED 

BY 

OUR EVER-LIVING POET 

WISHETH 

THE WELL-WISHING 

ADVENTURER IN 

SETTING 

FORTH 

T. T. 

The words are fantastically arranged. In ordinary gram- 
matical order they would run : ' The well-wishing adventurer 
in setting forth [i.e. the publisher] T [nomas] T[horpe] wisheth 
Mr. W. H., the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets, all 
happiness and that eternity promised by our ever-living poet. 1 

Few books of the sixteenth or seventeenth century were 
ushered into the world without a dedication. In most cases it was 
the work of the author, but numerous volumes, besides Shake- 
speare's ' Sonnets,' are extant in which the publisher (and 
not the author) fills the role of dedicator. The cause of the 
substitution is not far to seek. The signing of the dedication 
was an assertion of full and responsible ownership in the pub- 
lication, and the publisher in Shakespeare's lifetime was the 
full and responsible owner of a publication quite as often as the 
author. The modern conception of copyright had not yet been 
evolved. Whoever in the sixteenth or early seventeenth century 
was in actual possession of a manuscript was for practical 
purposes its full and responsible owner. Literary work largely 
circulated in manuscript. 1 Scriveners made a precarious liveli- 
hood by multiplying written copies, and an enterprising pub- 
lisher had many opportunities of becoming the owner of a 
popular book without the author's sanction or knowledge. 
When a volume in the reigns of Elizabeth or James I was 
published independently of the author, the publisher exercised 

1 See note to p. 88, supra. 



392 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

unchallenged all the owner's rights, not the least valued of 
Publishers' wn ^ cn was tnat °f choosing the patron of the enter- 
dedica- prise, and of penning the dedicatory compliment 
tions. above his signature. Occasionally circumstances 

might speciously justify the publisher's appearance in the guise 
of a dedicator. In the case of a posthumous book it sometimes 
happened that the author's friends renounced ownership or 
neglected to assert it. In other instances, the absence of an 
author from London while his work was passing through the 
press might throw on the publisher the task of supplying the 
dedication without exposing him to any charge of sharp practice. 
But as a rule one of only two inferences is possible when a pub- 
lisher's name figured at the foot of a dedicatory epistle : either 
the author was ignorant of the publisher's design, or he had re- 
fused to countenance it, and was openly defied. In the case of 
Shakespeare's f Sonnets ' it may safely be assumed that Shake- 
speare received no notice of Thorpe's intention of publishing 
the work, and that it was owing to the author's ignorance of 
the design that the dedication was composed and signed by the 
1 well-wishing adventurer in setting forth.' 

But whether author or publisher chose the patron of his 
wares, the choice was determined by much the same considera- 
tions. Self-interest was the principle underlying transactions 
between literary patron and protege. Publisher, like author, 
commonly chose as patron a man or woman of wealth and 
social influence who might be expected to acknowledge the 
compliment either by pecuniary reward or by friendly advertise- 
ment of the volume in their own social circle. At times the 
publisher, slightly extending the field of choice, selected a 
personal friend or mercantile acquaintance who had rendered 
him some service in trade or private life, and was likely to 
appreciate such general expressions of good will as were 
the accepted topic of dedications. Nothing that was fantastic 
or mysterious entered into the Elizabethan or the Jacobean 
publishers' shrewd schemes of business, and it may be asserted 
with confidence that it was under the everyday prosaic conditions 
of current literary traffic that the publisher Thorpe selected 
'Mr. W. H.' as the patron of the original edition of Shake- 
speare's ' Sonnets. 1 



THOMAS THORPE AND 'MR. W. H.' 393 

A study of Thorpe's character and career clears the point 
of doubt. Thorpe has been described as a native of Warwick- 
Thorpe's shire, Shakespeare's county, and a man eminent in his 
early life. profession. He was neither of these things. He 
was a native of Barnet in Middlesex, where his father kept an 
inn, and he himself through thirty years 1 experience of the book 
trade held his own with difficulty in its humblest ranks. He 
enjoyed the customary preliminary training. 1 At midsummer 
1584 he was apprenticed for nine years to a reputable printer 
and stationer, Richard Watkins.- Nearly ten years later he 
took up the freedom of the Stationers 1 Company, and was 
thereby qualified to set up as a publisher on his own account. 3 
He was not destitute of a taste for literature ; he knew scraps 
of Latin, and recognised a good manuscript when he saw one. 
But the ranks of London publishers were overcrowded, and 
such accomplishments as Thorpe possessed were poor com- 
pensation for a lack of capital or of family connections among 
those already established in the trade. 4 For many years he 
contented himself with an obscure situation as assistant or clerk 
to a stationer more favourably placed. 

It was as the self-appointed procurer and owner of an im- 
printed manuscript — a recognised role for novices to fill in the book 
trade of the period — that Thorpe made his first distinguishable 
appearance on the stage of literary history. In 1600 there 
fell into his hands in an unexplained manner a written copy of 
His- owner- Marlowe's unprinted translation of the first book of 
ship of the ' Lucan. 1 Thorpe confided his good fortune to Edward 

manuscript Bi ount t h en a stationer's assistant like himself, but 
of Mar- . ' . 

lowe's with better prospects. Blount had already achieved 

' Lucan.' a m odest success in the same capacity of procurer 

or picker-up of neglected ' copy.' 5 In 1598 he became proprietor 

of Marlowe's unfinished and unpublished ' Hero and Leander,' 

and found among better-equipped friends in the trade both 

1 The details of his career are drawn from Mr. Arber's Transcript of the 
Registers of the Stationers' Company. 

2 Arber, ii. 124. 3 lb. ii. 713. 

* A younger brother, Richard, was apprenticed to a stationer, Martin Ensor, for 
seven years from August 24, 1596, but he disappeared before gaining the freedom of 
the Company, either dying young or seeking another occupation (cf. Arber's 
Transcript, ii. 213). 

5 Cf. Bibliographic a, i. 474-98, where I have given an account of Blount's pro- 
fessional career in a paper called ' An Elizabethan Bookseller.' 



394 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

a printer and a publisher for his treasure-trove. Blount 
good-naturedly interested himself in Thorpe's 'find, 1 and it 
was through Blount's good offices that Peter Short undertook 
to print Thorpe's manuscript of Marlowe's l Lucan,' and 
Walter Burre agreed to sell it at his shop in St. Paul's 
Churchyard. As owner of the manuscript Thorpe exerted the 
right of choosing a patron for the venture and of supplying the 
Hisdedica- dedicatory epistle. The patron of his choice was 
tory ad- his friend Blount, and he made the dedication the 
Fd GSS ^d vehicle of his gratitude for the assistance he had just 
Blount in received. The style of the dedication was somewhat 
1600. bombastic, but Thorpe showed a literary sense when 

he designated Marlowe ' that pure elemental wit,' and a good 
deal of dry humour in offering to ; his kind and true friend' 
Blount ' some few instructions ' whereby he might accom- 
modate himself to the unaccustomed role of patron. 1 For the 
conventional type of patron Thorpe disavowed respect. He 
preferred to place himself under the protection of a friend in 
the trade whose good will had already stood him in good stead, 
and was capable of benefiting him hereafter. 

This venture laid the foundation of Thorpe's fortunes. Three 
years later he was able to place his own name on the title-page 
of two humbler literary prizes — each an insignificant pamphlet 
on current events.' 2 Thenceforth for a dozen years his name 
reappeared annually on one, two, or three volumes. After 161 4 
his operations were few and far between, and they ceased 
altogether in 1624. He seems to have ended his days in poverty, 
and he has been identified with the Thomas Thorpe who was 
granted an almsroom in the hospital of Ewelme, Oxfordshire, 
December 3, 1635. 3 

1 Thorpe gives a sarcastic description of a typical patron, and amply attests the 
purely commercial relations ordinarily subsisting between dedicator and dedicatee. 
' When I bring you the book,' he advises Blount, ' take physic and keep state. As- 
sign me a time by your man to come again. . . . Censure scornfully enough and 
somewhat like a traveller. Commend nothing lest you discredit your (that which 
you would seem to have) judgment. . . . One special virtue in our patrons of these 
days I have promised myself you shall fit excellently, which is to give nothing.' 
Finally Thorpe, changing his tone, challenges his patron's love ' both in this and, I 
hope, many more succeeding offices.' 

2 One gave an account of the East India Company's fleet ; the other reported 
a speech delivered by Richard Martin, M.P., to James I at Stamford Hill during 
the royal progress to London. 

a Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1635, p. 527. 



THOMAS THORPE AND 'MR. W. H.' 395 

Thorpe was associated with the publication of twenty-nine 

volumes in all. 1 including Marlowe's ' Lucan ' : but in almost all 

his operations his personal energies were confined, as in his 

~, . initial enterprise, to procuring the manuscript. For 
Character l l & l 

of his a short period in 1608 he occupied a shop. The 

business. Tiger's Head, in St. Paul's Churchyard, and the fact 
was duly announced on the title-pages of three publications 
which he issued in that year.- But his other undertakings were 
described on their title-pages as printed for him by one stationer 
and sold for him by another: and when any address found 
mention at all. it was the shopkeeper's address, and not his 
own. He never enjoyed in permanence the profits or dignity 
of printing his • copy ' at a press of his own, or selling books on 
premises of his own, and he can claim the distinction of having 
pursued in this homeless fashion the well-defined profession of 
procurer of manuscripts for a longer period than any other 
known member of the Stationers" Company. Though many 
others began their career in that capacity, all except Thorpe, 
as far as they can be traced, either developed into printers or 
booksellers, or. failing in that, betook themselves to other trades. 
Very few of his wares does Thorpe appear to have pro- 
cured direct from the authors. It is true that between 1605 
and 161 1 there were issued under his auspices some eight 
volumes of genuine literary value, including, besides Shakespeare's 
' Sonnets," three plays by Chapman, 3 four works of Ben Jonson. 

" 3 Two bore his name on the title-page in 1603; one in 1604; two in 1605; two 
in i6o5: two in 1607; three in 1608; one in 1609 {i.e. the Sonnets); three in 
1610 (i.e. H istrio-mastrix , or the Playwright, as well as Healey's translations) ; 
two in t6n; one in 1612; three in 1613; two in 1614; two in 1616; one in 1618; 
and finally one in 1624. The last was a new edition of George Chapman's 
Conspiracie and Tragedie of Charles Duke of Byron, which Thorpe first published 
in 1608. 

2 They were Wits A. B.C. or a ce7iturie of Epigrams (anon.), by R. West of 
Magdalen College, Oxford (a copy is in the Bodleian Library); Chapman's Byron, 
and Jonson's Masques of Blackness and Beauty. 

3 Chapman and Jonson were very voluminous authors, and their works were 
sought after by almost all the publishers of London, many of whom were successful 
in launching one or two with or without the author's sanction. Thorpe seems to 
have taken particular care with Jonson's books, but none of Jonson's works fell into 
Thorpe's hands before 1605 or after 1608, a minute fraction of Jonson's literary 
life. It is significant that the author's dedication — the one certain mark of publica- 
tion with the author's sanction — appears in only one of the three plays by Chapman 
that Thorpe issued, viz. in Byron. One or two copies of Thorpe's impression of 
All Fools have a dedication by the author, but it is absent from most of them. No 



396 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

and Coryat's ' Odcombian Banquet. 1 But the taint of mysterious 
origin attached to most of his literary properties. He doubtless 
owed them to the exchange of a few pence or shillings with a 
scrivener's hireling ; and the transaction was not one of which 
the author had cognisance. 

It is quite plain that no negotiation with the author preceded 
the formation of Thorpe's resolve to publish for the first time 
Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' in 1609. Had Shakespeare associated 
himself with the enterprise, the world would fortunately have 
been spared Thorpe's dedication to 'Mr. W. H.' ' T, TVs' 
place would have been filled by ' W. S.' The whole transaction 
was in Thorpe's vein. Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' had been 
Shake- already circulating in manuscript for eleven years ; 

speare's on iy two had as yet been printed, and those were 
at publish- issued by the pirate publisher, William Jaggard, in 
ers' hands, the fraudulently christened volume ' The Passionate 
Pilgrim, by William Shakespeare,' in 1599. Shakespeare, ex- 
cept in the case of his two narrative poems, showed utter in- 
difference to all questions touching the publication of his 
works. Of the sixteen plays of his that were published in his 
lifetime, not one was printed with his sanction. He made no 
audible protest when seven contemptible dramas in which he 
had no hand were published with his name or initials on the 
title-page while his fame was at its height. With only one 
publisher of his time, Richard Field, his fellow-townsman, who 
was responsible for the issue of ' Venus ' and ' Lucrece,' is it 
likely that he came into personal relations, and there is nothing 
to show that he maintained relations with Field after the pub- 
lication of ' Lucrece ' in 1594. 

In fitting accord with the circumstance that the publication 
of the 'Sonnets' was a tradesman's venture which ignored the 
author's feelings and rights, Thorpe in both the entry of the 
book in the ' Stationers' Registers ' and on its title-page 
brusquely designated it 'Shakespeares Sonnets,' instead of 
following the more urbane collocation of words invariably 
adopted by living authors, viz. ' Sonnets by William Shake- 
speare.' 

known copy of Thorpe's edition of Chapman's Gentleman Usher has any dedica- 
tion. 



THOMAS THORPE AND 'MR. W. H.' 397 

In framing the dedication Thorpe followed established 
precedent. Initials run riot over Elizabethan and Jacobean 
The use of books. Printers and publishers, authors and con- 
dedications tributors of prefatory commendations, were all in the 
of Eliza- habit of masking themselves behind such symbols. 

bethan and p a t rons figured under initials in dedications some- 
Jacob an ° 
books. what less frequently than other sharers in the book's 

production. But the conditions determining the employment of 

initials in that relation were well defined. The employment of 

initials in a dedication was a recognised mark of a close friendship 

or intimacy between patron and dedicator. It was a sign that 

the patron's fame was limited to a small circle, and that the 

revelation of his full name was not a matter of interest to a wide 

public. Such are the dominant notes of almost all the extant 

dedications in which the patron is addressed by his initials. 

In 1598 Samuel Rowlands addressed the dedication of his 

' Betraying of Christ ' to his 4 deare affected friend Maister 

H. W., gentleman. 1 An edition of Robert Southwell's "Short 

Rule of Life 1 which appeared in the same year bore a dedication 

addressed 'to my deare affected friend M. [i.e. Mr.] D. S.. 

gentleman.'' The poet Richard Barnfield also in the same year 

dedicated the opening sonnet in his 'Poems in Divers Humours ' 

to his ' friend Maister R. L. 1 In 161 7 Dunstan Gale dedicated 

a poem, ' Pyramus and Thisbe, 1 to the ' worshipfull his verie 

friend D. [i.e. Dr.] B. H.' 1 

There was nothing exceptional in the words of greeting 

which Thorpe addressed to his patron 'Mr. W. H. 1 They 

followed a widely adopted formula. Dedications of the time 

usually consisted of two distinct parts. There was a dedicatory 

epistle, which might touch at any length, in either verse or 

prose, on the subject of the book and the writer's relations with 

1 Many other instances of initials figuring in dedications under slightly different 
circumstances will occur to bibliographers, but all, on examination, point to the 
existence of a close intimacy between dedicator and dedicatee. R. S.'s [i.e. possibly 
Richard Stafford's] 'Epistle dedicatorie' before his Heraclitus (Oxford, 1609) was 
inscribed 'to his much honoured father S. F. S.' An Apologie for Women, or an 
Opposition to Mr. D. G. his assertion . . . by IV. H. of Ex. in Ox. (Oxford, 1609), 
was dedicated to ' the honourable and right vertuous ladie, the Ladie M. H.' This 
volume, published in the same year as Shakespeare's Sonnets, offers a pertinent 
example of the generous freedom with which initials were scattered over the pre- 
liminary pages of books of the day. 



398 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

his patron. But there was usually, in addition, a preliminary 
salutation confined to such a single sentence as Thorpe dis- 
Frequency played on the first page of his edition of Shake- 
for^happi- s P eare1 s sonnets. In that preliminary sentence the 
ness ' and dedicator habitually ' wisheth ' his patron one or 
dedicator- 111 more °^ sucn blessings as health, long life, happiness, 
greetings. and eternity. 'Al perseverance with soules happi- 
ness ' Thomas Powell ' wisheth ' the Countess of Kildare on 
the first page of his * Passionate Poet 1 in 1601. 'All happi- 
nes ' is the greeting of Thomas Watson, the sonnetteer, to his 
patron, the Earl of Oxford, on the threshold of Watson's l Pas- 
sionate Century of Love.' There is hardly a book published by 
Robert Greene between 1580 and 1592 that does not open with 
an adjuration before the dedicatory epistle in the form : ' To 

Robert Greene wisheth increase of honour with the 

full fruition of perfect felicity.' 

Thorpe in Shakespeare's sonnets left the salutation to stand 
alone, and omitted the supplement of a dedicatory epistle ; 
but this, too, was not unusual. There exists an abundance 
of contemporary examples of the dedicatory salutation without 
the sequel of the dedicatory epistle. Edmund Spenser's 
dedication of the ' Faerie Queen ' to Elizabeth consists 
solely of the salutation in the form of an assurance that the 
writer ' consecrates these his labours to live with the eter- 
nitie of her fame.' Michael Drayton in both his ' Idea, 
The Shepheard's Garland' (1593), and in his k Poemes Lyrick 
and Pastorall ' (1609), confined his address to his patron to a 
single sentence of salutation. 1 Richard Braithwaite in 161 1 
exclusively saluted the patron of his ' Golden Fleece ' with ' the 
continuance of God's temporall blessings in this life, with the 
crowne of immortalitie in the world to come ; ' while in like 
manner he greeted the patron of his • Sonnets and Madrigals ' 
in the same year with l the prosperitie of times successe in this 
life, with the reward of eternitie in the world to come.' It is 
' happiness ' and ' eternity,' or an equivalent paraphrase, that had 
the widest vogue among the good wishes with which the dedi- 

1 In the volume of 1593 the words run: ' To the noble and valorous gentleman 
Master Robert Dudley, enriched with all vertues of the minde and worthy of all 
honorable desert. Your most affectionate and devoted Michael Drayton.' 



THOMAS THORPE AND 'MR. W. H.' 399 

cator in the early years of the seventeenth century besought 
his patron's favour on the first page of his book. But 
Thorpe was too self-assertive to be a slavish imitator. 
His addiction to bombast and his elementary appreciation of 
literature recommended to him the practice of incorporating in 
his dedicatory salutation some high-sounding embellishments 
of the accepted formula suggested by his author's writing. 1 In 
his dedication of the 'Sonnets' to 'Mr. W. H.' he grafted on 
the common formula a reference to the immortality which 
Shakespeare, after the habit of contemporary sonnetteers, 
promised the hero of his sonnets in the pages that succeeded. 
With characteristic magniloquence, Thorpe added the decora- 
tive and supererogatory phrase, ' promised by our ever-living 
poet,' to the conventional dedicatory wish for his patron's 'all 
happiness' and 'eternitie.' 2 

Thorpe, as far as is known, penned only one dedication 
before that to Shakespeare's ' Sonnets.' His dedicatory 
experience was previously limited to the inscription of Marlowe's 
' Lucan ' in 1600 to Blount, his friend in the trade. Three 
F" d di dedications by Thorpe survive of a date subsequent 
cations by to the issue of the ' Sonnets.' One of these is 
Thorpe. dedicated to John Florio, and the other two to the 
Earl of Pembroke. 3 But these three dedications all prefaced 

1 In 1610, in dedicating St. Augustine, Of the Citie of God to the Earl of 
Pembroke, Thorpe awkwardly describes the subject-matter as ' a desired citie sure 
in heaven,' and assigns to ' St. Augustine and his commentator Vives ' a ' savour of 
the secular.' In the same year, in dedicating Epictetus's Manuall to Florio, he 
bombastically pronounces the book to be ' the hand to philosophy ; the instrument of 
instruments ; as Nature greatest in the least ; as Homer's Was in a nutshell ; in 
lesse compasse more cunning.' For other examples of Thorpe's pretentious, half- 
educated, and ungrammatical style, see p. 403, n. 2. 

2 The suggestion is often made that the only parallel to Thorpe's salutation of 
happiness is met with in George Wither's Abuses Whipt and Stript (London, 1613). 
There the dedicatory epistle is prefaced by the ironical salutation ' To himselfe 
G. W. wisheth all happinesse.' It is further asserted that Wither had probably 
Thorpe's dedication to ' Mr. W. H.' in view when he wrote that satirical sentence. 
It will now be recognised that Wither aimed very gently at no identifiable book, 
but at a feature common to scores of books. Since his Abuses was printed by 
George Eld and sold by Francis Burton — the printer and publisher concerned 
in 1606 in the publication of ' W. H.V Southwell manuscript — there is a 
bare chance that Wither had in mind ' W. H.V greeting of Mathew Saunders, 
but fifty recently published volumes would have supplied him with similar hints. 

3 Thorpe dedicated to Florio Epictetus his Manuall, and Cebes his Table, out 



400 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

volumes of translations by one John Healey, whose manuscripts 

had become Thorpe's prey after the author had emigrated to 

Virginia, where he died shortly after landing. Thorpe chose, he 

tells us, Florio and the Earl of Pembroke as patrons of Healey's 

unprinted manuscripts because they had been patrons of 

Healey before his expatriation and death. There is evidence to 

prove that in choosing a patron for the ' Sonnets, 1 and penning 

a dedication for the second time, he pursued the exact procedure 

that he had followed — deliberately and for reasons that he fully 

stated — in his first and only preceding dedicatory venture. He 

chose his patron from the circle of his trade associates, and 

it must have been because his patron was a personal friend 

that he addressed him by his initials, ' W. H.' 

Shakespeare's ' Sonnets ' is not the only volume of the period 

in the introductory pages of which the initials *W. H.' play a 

'W H' prominent part. In 1606 one who concealed him- 

signs dedi- self under the same letters performed for ' A Foure- 

cation of f ou id Meditation' (a collection of pious poems which 

Southwell s , ^ , r • • 

poems in the Jesuit Robert Southwell left in manuscript at his 

1606. death) the identical service that Thorpe performed 

for Marlowe's 'Lucan' in 1600, and for Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' 
in 1609. In 1606 Southwell's manuscript fell into the hands 
of this ' W. H., 1 and he published it through the agency of the 
printer, George Eld, and of an insignificant bookseller, Francis 
Burton. 1 ' W. H.,' in his capacity of owner, supplied the dedi- 
cation with his own pen under his initials. Of the Jesuit's newly 
recovered poems 'W. H.' wrote, 'Long have they lien hidden 
in obscuritie, and haply had never seene the light, had not a 
meere accident conveyed them to my hands. But, having 
seriously perused them, loath I was that any who are religiously 
affected, should be deprived of so great a comfort, as the due 

of Greek originall by Io. Healey, 1610. He dedicated to the Earl of Pembroke 
St. Augustine, Of the Citie of God. . . . Englished by I. H., 1610, and a second 
edition of Healey's Epictetus, 1616. 

1 Southwell's Fourefould Meditation of 1606 is a book of excessive rarity, only 
one complete printed copy having been met with in our time. A fragment of the 
only other printed copy known is now in the British Museum. The work was 
reprinted in 1895, chiefly from an early copy in manuscript, by Mr. Charles 
Edmonds, the accomplished bibliographer, who in a letter to the Athenceum on 
November 1, 1873. suggested for the first time the identity of ' W. H.,' the dedicator 
of Southwell's poem, with Thorpe's ' Mr. W. H.' 



THOMAS THORPE AND 'MR. W. H.' 401 

consideration thereof may bring unto them. 1 ' W. H.' chose as 
patron of his venture one Mathew Saunders, Esq., and to the 
dedicatory epistle prefixed a conventional salutation wishing 
Saunders long life and prosperity. The greeting was printed in 
large and bold type thus : 

To the Right Worfhipfull and 

Vertuous Gentleman, Mathew 

Saunders, Efquire 

W. H. wifheth, with long life, a profperous 

achieuement of his good defires. 

There follows in small type, regularly printed across the page, 
a dedicatory letter — the frequent sequel of the dedicatory salu- 
tation — in which the writer, 'W. H.,' commends the religious 
temper of i these meditations ' and deprecates the coldness and 
sterility of his own 'conceits.' The dedicator signs himself at 
the bottom of the page i Your Worships unfained affectionate, 
W. H.' 1 

The two books — Southwell's ' Foure-fould Meditations ' of 
1606, and Shakespeare's 'Sonnets' of 1609 — have more in 
common than the appearance on the preliminary pages of the 
initials ' W. H.' in a prominent place, and of the common form 
of- dedicatory salutation. Both volumes, it was announced on 
the title-pages, came from the same press — the press of George 
Eld. Eld for many years co-operated with Thorpe in business. 
In 1605 he printed for Thorpe Ben Jonson's ' Sejanus,' and in 
each of the years 1607, 1608, 1609, and 1610 at least one of his 
ventures was publicly declared to be a specimen of Eld's 

X A manuscript volume at Oscott College contains a contemporary copy of 
those poems by Southwell which ' unfained affectionate W. H.' first gave to the 
printing press. The owner of the Oscott volume, Peter Mowle or Moulde (as he 
indifferently spells his name), entered on the first page of the manuscript in his own 
handwriting an ' epistel dedicatorie ' which he confined to the conventional greeting 
of happiness here and hereafter. The words ran : ' To the right worshipfull Mr. 
Thomas Knevett Esquire, Peter Mowle wisheth the perpetuytie of true felysitie, the 
health of bodie and soule with continwance of worshipp in this worlde, And after 
Death the participation of Heavenlie happiness dewringe all worldes for ever.' 



402 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

typography. Many of Thorpe's books came forth without any 
mention of the printer ; but Eld's name figures more frequently 
upon them than that of any other printer. Between 1605 
and 1609 it is likely that Eld printed all Thorpe's ' copy ' as matter 
of course and that he was in constant relations with him. 

There is little doubt that the 'W.H.' of the Southwell 
volume was Mr. William Hall, who, when he procured that 
' W. H.' manuscript for publication, was an humble auxiliary 
wflliam * n the Polishing army. Hall flits rapidly across the 
Hall. stage of literary history. He served an apprentice- 

ship to the printer and stationer John Allde from 1577 to 1584, 
and was admitted to the freedom of the Stationers' Company in 
the latter year. For the long period of twenty-two years after 
his release from his indentures he was connected with the trade 
in a dependent capacity, doubtless as assistant to a master- 
stationer. When in 1606 the manuscript of Southwell's poems 
was conveyed to his hands and he adopted the recognised role 
of procurer of their publication, he had not set up in business 
for himself. It was only later in the same year (1606) that he 
obtained the license of the Stationers' Company to inaugurate 
a press in his own name, and two years passed before he began 
business. In 1608 he obtained for publication a theological 
manuscript which appeared next year with his name on the 
title-page for the first time. This volume constituted the earliest 
credential of his independence. It entitled him to the prefix 
'Mr.' in all social relations. Between 1609 and 1614 he printed 
some twenty volumes, most of them sermons and almost all 
devotional in tone. The most important of his secular under- 
taking was Guillim's far-famed ' Display of Heraldrie, 1 a folio 
issued in 1610. In 161 2 Hall printed an account of the con- 
viction and execution of a noted pickpocket, John Selman, who 
had been arrested while professionally engaged in the Royal 
Chapel at Whitehall. On the title-page Hall gave his own name 
by his initials only. The book was described in bold type as 
'printed by W. H.' and as on sale at the shop of Thomas 
Archer in St. Paul's Churchyard. Hall was a careful printer 
with a healthy dread of misprints, but his business dwindled 
after 161 3, and, soon disposing of it to one John Beale, he dis- 
appeared into private life. 



THOMAS THORPE AND 'MR. W. H.' 403 

'W. H.* are no uncommon initials, and there is more interest 
attaching to the discovery of 'Mr. W. H.'s" position in life and 
his function in relation to the scheme of the publication of 
the • Sonnets' than in establishing his full name. But there 
is every probability that William Hall, the ' W. H.' of the 
Southwell dedication, was one and the same person with the 
'Mr. W. H." of Thorpe's dedication of the 'Sonnets.' Xo other 
inhabitant of London was habitually known to mask himself 
under those letters. William Hall was the only man bearing 
those initials who there is reason to suppose was on familiar 
terms with Thorpe. 1 Both were engaged at much the same 
period in London in the same occupation of procuring manu- 
scripts for publication ; both inscribed their literary treasure- 
trove in the common formula to patrons for whom they claimed 
no high rank or distinction, and both engaged the same printer 
to print their most valuable prize. 

Xo condition of the problem of the identity of Thorpe's 
friend 'Mr. W. H.' seems ignored by the adoption of the inter- 
' The onlie pretation that he was the future master-printer 
begetter' William Hall. The objection that ' Mr. W. H." could 

niG3.rs 

« on ly pro- not have been Thorpe's friend in trade, because 
curer.' while wishing him all happiness and eternity Thorpe 

dubs him -the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets." is not 
formidable. Thorpe rarely used words with much exactness. - 

1 A bookseller (not a printer), William Holmes, who was in business for himself 
between 1590 and 1615, was the only other member of the Stationers' Company bear- 
ing at the required dates the initials of ' W. H.' But he was ordinarily known by 
his full name, and there is no indication that he had either professional or private 
relations with Thorpe. 

2 Most of his dedications are penned in a loose diction of pretentious bombast 
which it is difficult to interpret exactly. When dedicating in 1610 — the year after 
the issue of the Sonnets — Healey's Epictetus his Mafuiall ' to a true fauover of 
forward spirits, Maister John Florio,' Thorpe writes of Epictetus's work: 'In all 
languages, ages, by all persons high prized, imbraced, yea inbosomed. It filles not 
the hand with leaues, but fills ye head with lessons: nor would bee held in hand but 
had by harte to boote. He is more senceless than a stocke that hath no good sence 
of this stoick.' In the same year, when dedicating Healey's translation of St. 
Augustine's Citie of God to the Earl of Pembroke, Thorpe clumsily refers to 
Pembroke's patronage of Healey's earlier efforts in translation thus : ' He that 
against detraction beyond expectation, then found your sweete patronage in a 
matter of small moment without distrust or disturbance, in this work of more weight, 
as he approoued his more abilitie, so would not but expect your Honours more 
acceptance.' 



404 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

It is obvious that he did not employ * begetter 1 in the ordinary 
sense. ' Begetter,' when literally interpreted as applied to a 
literary work, means father, author, producer, and it cannot 
be seriously urged that Thorpe intended to describe ' Mr. W. H. 1 
as the author of the 'Sonnets. 1 'Begetter 1 has been used in 
the figurative sense of inspirer, and it is often assumed that by 
'only begetter 1 Thorpe meant 'sole inspirer, 1 and that by the 
use of those words he intended to hint at the close relations 
subsisting between ' W. H. 1 and Shakespeare in the dramatist's 
early life ; but that interpretation presents numberless difficulties. 
It was contrary to Thorpe's aims in business to invest a dedica- 
tion with any cryptic significance and thus mystify his customers. 
Moreover, his career and the circumstances under which he 
became the publisher of the sonnets confute the assumption that 
he was in such relations with Shakespeare or with Shakespeare's 
associates as would give him any knowledge of Shakespeare's 
early career that was not public property. All that Thorpe — 
the struggling pirate-publisher, ' the well-wishing adventurer in 
setting forth 1 wares mysteriously come by — knew or probably 
cared to know of Shakespeare was that he was the most popular 
and honoured of the literary producers of the day. When 
Thorpe had the luck to acquire surreptitiously an unprinted 
manuscript by ' our ever-living poet, 1 it was not in the great 
man's circle of friends or patrons, to which hitherto he had had 
no access, that he was likely to seek his own patron. Element- 
ary considerations of prudence impelled him to publish his 
treasure-trove with all expedition, and not disclose his design 
prematurely to one who might possibly take steps to hinder its 
fulfilment. But that Thorpe had no 'inspirer 1 of the ' Sonnets 1 
in his mind when he addressed himself to 'Mr. W. H. 1 is 
finally proved by the circumstance that the only identifiable 
male 'inspirer 1 of the poems was the Earl of Southampton, to 
whom the initials 'W. H. 1 do not apply. 

Of the figurative meanings set in Elizabethan English on the 
word ' begetter, 1 that of ' inspirer : is by no means the only one 
or the most common. ' Beget 7 was not infrequently employed 
in the attenuated sense of ' get, 1 ' procure, 1 or ' obtain, 1 a sense 
which is easily deducible from the original one of ' bring 
into being. 1 Hamlet, when addressing the players, bids them 



THOMAS THORPE AND 'MR. W. H.' 405 

'in the very whirlwind of passion acquire and beget a tem- 
perance that may give it smoothness.'' 'I have some cousins 
german at Court,' wrote Dekker in 1602, in his ' Satiro-Mastix,' 
* [that] shall beget you the reversion of the Master of the King's 
Revels.' 'Mr. W. H.,' whom Thorpe described as 'the only 
begetter of these ensuing sonnets,' was in all probability the 
acquirer or procurer of the manuscript, who, figuratively speak- 
ing, brought the book into being either by first placing the 
manuscript in Thorpe's hands or by pointing out the means 
by which a copy might be acquired. To assign such signifi- 
cance to the word 'begetter' was entirely in Thorpe's vein. 1 
Thorpe described his rdle in the piratical enterprise of the 
'Sonnets' as that of 'the well-wishing adventurer in setting 
forth,' i.e. the hopeful speculator in the scheme. 'Mr. W. H.' 
doubtless played the almost equally important part — one as 
well known then as now in commercial operations — of the 
'vender' of the property to be exploited. 

1 This is the sense allotted to the word in the great Variorum edition of 1821 by 
Malone's disciple, James Boswell the younger, who, like his master, was a biblio- 
graphical expert of the highest authority. The fact that the eighteenth-century 
commentators — men like Malone and Steevens — who were thoroughly well versed in 
the literary history of the sixteenth century, should have failed to recognise any con- 
nection between ' Mr. W. H.' and Shakespeare's personal history is in itself a very 
strong argument against the interpretation foisted on the dedication during the 
present century by writers who have no pretensions to be reckoned the equals of 
Malone and Steevens as literary archaeologists. 



406 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



VI 

'MR. WILLIAM HERBERT' 

For fully sixty years it has been very generally assumed 
that Shakespeare addressed the bulk of his sonnets to the 
Origin of young Earl of Pembroke. This theory owes its 
thVM* 011 °rigi n t° a speciously lucky guess which was first dis- 
W. H. ' closed to the public in 1832, and won for a time almost 
stands for universal acceptance. 1 Thorpe's form of address was 
liam' Her- ne ^ to justify the mistaken inference that, whoever 
bert.' < Mr. W. H.' may have been, he and no other was 

the hero of the alleged story of the poems ; and the corner- 
stone of the Pembroke theory was the assumption that the 
letters * Mr. W. H.' in the dedication did duty for the words 
1 Mr. William Herbert,' by which name the (third) Earl of Pem- 
broke was represented as having been known in youth. The 

1 James Boaden, a journalist and the biographer of Kemble and Mrs. Siddons, 
was the first to suggest the Pembroke theory in a letter to the Gentleman's 
Magazine in 1832. A few months later Mr. James Hey wood Bright wrote to the 
magazine claiming to have reached the same conclusion as early as 1819, although 
he had not published it. Boaden re-stated the Pembroke theory in a volume on 
Shakespeare's Sonnets which he published in 1837. C. Armitage Brown adopted 
it in 1838 in his Shakespeare 's Autobiographical Poems. The Rev. Joseph Hunter, 
who accepted the theory without qualification, significantly pointed out in his New 
Illustrations of Shakespeare in 1845 ("• 34^) that it had not occurred to any of the 
writers in the great Variorum editions of Shakespeare, nor to critics so acute in 
matters of literary history as Malone or George Chalmers. The theory is treated 
as proved fact in many recent literary manuals. Of its supporters at the date of 
writing the most ardent is Mr. Thomas Tyler, who published an edition of the 
sonnets in 1890, and there further advanced a claim to identify the 'dark lady' of 
the sonnets with Mary Fitton, a lady of the Court and the Earl of Pembroke's 
mistress. Mr. Tyler has endeavoured to substantiate both the Pembroke and the 
Fitton theories, by merely repeating his original arguments, in a pamphlet which 
appeared in April of this year under the title of The Herbert-Fitton Theory : a 
Reply [i.e. to criticisms of the theories by Lady Newdegate and by myself]. The 
Pembroke theory, whose adherents have dwindled of late, will henceforth be 
relegated, I trust, to the category of popular delusions. 



'MR. WILLIAM HERBERT' 407 

originators of the theory claimed to discover in the Earl of 
Pembroke the only young man of rank and wealth to whom the 
initials *W. H. 1 applied at the needful dates. In thus inter- 
preting the initials, the Pembroke theorists made a blunder 
that proves on examination to be fatal to their whole con- 
tention. 

The nobleman under consideration succeeded to the earl- 
dom of Pembroke on his father's death on January 19, 1601 
The Earl of (N- S.), when he was twenty years and nine months 
Pembroke old, and from that date it is unquestioned that he was 

known only always known by his lawful title. But it has been 

as Lord 

Herbert in overlooked that the designation 'Mr. William Her- 

youth. bert,' for which the initials ' Mr. W T . H.' have been long 

held to stand, could never in the mind of Thomas Thorpe or 
any other contemporary have denominated the Earl at any 
moment of his career. When he came into the world on 
April 9, 1580, his father had been (the second) Earl of Pem- 
broke for ten years, and he, as the eldest son, was from the 
hour of his birth known in all relations of life — even in the 
baptismal entry in the parish register — by the title of Lord 
Herbert, and by no other. During the lifetime of his father 
and his own minority several references were made to him in 
the extant correspondence of friends of varying degrees of 
intimacy. He is called by them, without exception, ' my Lord 
Herbert, 1 'the Lord Herbert,' or 'Lord Herbert. 11 It is true 
that as the eldest son of an earl he held the title by courtesy, 
but for all practical purposes it was as well recognised in com- 
mon speech as if he had been a peer in his own right. No one 
nowadays would address in current parlance, or even entertain 
the conception of, Viscount Cranborne, the heir of the present 
Prime Minister, as 'Mr. J. CV or 'Mr. James Cecil.' It is just 
as legitimate to assert that it would have occurred to an Eliza- 
bethan — least of all to a personal acquaintance or to a publisher 

!Cf. Sydney Papers, ed. Collins, i. 353. ' My Lord (of Pembroke) himself with 
my Lord Harbert (are) come up to see the Queen ' ( Rowland Whyte to Sir Robert 
Sydney, October 8,1591), and again p. 361 (November 16, 1595); and p. 372 
(December 5, 1595). John Chamberlain wrote to Sir Dudley Carleton on August 1, 
1599, ' young Lord Harbert, Sir Henrie Carie, and Sir William Woodhouse, are all 
in election at Court, who shall set the best legge foremost.' Chamberlains Letters 
(Camden Soc), p. 57. 



408 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

who stood toward his patron in the relation of a personal 
dependent — to describe { young Lord Herbert,' of Elizabeth's 
reign, as ' Mr. William Herbert.' A lawyer, who in the way of 
business might have to mention the young lord's name in a 
legal document, would have entered it as 'William Herbert, 
commonly called Lord Herbert.' The appellation 'Mr.' was 
not used loosely then as now, but indicated a precise social 
grade. Thorpe's employment of the prefix < Mr.' without quali- 
fication is in itself fatal to the pretension that any lord, whether 
by right or courtesy, was intended. 1 

Proof is at hand to establish that Thorpe was under no 
misapprehension as to the proper appellation of the Earl of 
Thorpe's Pembroke, and was incapable of venturing on the 
modeofad- meaningless misnomer of i Mr. W. H.' Insignificant 
the Earl of publisher though he was, and sceptical as he was of 
Pembroke, the merits of noble patrons, he was not proof against 
the temptation, when an opportunity was directly offered him, of 
adorning the prefatory pages of a publication with the name 
of a nobleman who enjoyed the high official station, the literary 
culture, and social influence of the third Earl of Pembroke. 
In 1610 — a year after he published the ' Sonnets ' — there came 
into his hands the manuscripts by John Healey, that humble 
literary aspirant who had a few months before emigrated to 
Virginia, and had, it would seem, died there. Healey, before 
leaving England, had secured through the good offices of John 
Florio (a man of influence in both fashionable and literary circles), 
the patronage of the Earl of Pembroke for a translation of 
Bishop Hall's fanciful satire, 'Mundus alter et idem.' Calling 

1 Thomas Sackville, the author of the Induction to The Mirror for Magistrates, 
and other poetical pieces, and part author of Gorboduc, was born plain ' Thomas 
Sackville,' and was ordinarily addressed in youth as ' Mr. Sackville.' He wrote all 
his literary work while he bore that and no other designation. He subsequently 
abandoned literature for politics, and was knighted and created Lord Buckhurst. 
Very late in life, in 1604, — at the age of sixty-eight, — he became Earl of Dorset. A 
few of his youthful effusions, which bore his early signature, ' M. [i.e. Mr.] Sackville,' 
were reprinted with that signature unaltered in an encyclopaedic anthology, 
Engla?id's Parnassus, which was published, wholly independently of him, in 1600, 
after he had become Baron Buckhurst. About the same date he was similarly 
designated Thomas or Mr. Sackville in a reprint, unauthorised by him, of his 
Induction to The Mirror for Magistrates, which was in the original text ascribed, 
with perfect correctness, to Thomas or Mr. Sackville. There is clearly no sort of 
parallel (as has been urged) between such an explicable, and not unwarrantable, 
metachronism and the misnaming of the Earl of Pembroke ' Mr. W. H.' As might 
be anticipated, persistent research affords no parallel for the latter irregularity. 



'MR. WILLIAM HERBERT' 409 

his book ' The Discoverie of a New World,' Healey had prefixed 
to it. in 1609, an epistle inscribed in garish terms of flattery to 
the ' Truest mirrour of truest honor, William Earl of Pembroke." l 
When Thorpe subsequently made up his mind to publish, on 
his own account, other translations by the same hand, he found 
it desirable to seek the same patron. Accordingly, in 1610. he 
prefixed in his own name, to an edition of Healey's translation 
of St. Augustine's ; Citie of God," a dedicatory address * to the 
honorablest patron of the Muses and good mindes. Lord William, 
Earle of Pembroke, Knight of the Honourable Order (of the 
Garter). &c.' In involved sentences Thorpe tells the * right 
gracious and gracefule Lord ' how the author left the work at 
death to be a ' testimonie of gratitude, observance, and heart's 
honor to your honour.*' ' Wherefore, 1 he explains, ' his legacie, 
laide at your Honour's feete, is rather here delivered to your 
Honour's humbly thrise-kissed hands by his poore delegate. 
Your Lordship's true devoted, Th. Th.' 

Again, in 1616, when Thorpe procured the issue of a second 
edition of another of Healey's translations, ' Epictetus Manuall. 
Cebes Table. Theoprastus Characters,' he supplied more con- 
spicuous evidence of the servility with which he deemed it 
incumbent on him to approach a potent patron. As this address 
by Thorpe to Pembroke is difficult of access, I give it in 
extenso : 
• To the Right Honourable, William Earle of Pembroke, Lord 

Chamberlaine to His Majestie, one of his most honorable 

Privie Counsell, and Knight of the most noble order of the 

Garter, &c. 

• Right Honorable. — It may worthily seeme strange unto 
your Lordship, out of what frenzy one of my meanenesse hath 
presumed to commit this Sacriledge, in the straightnesse of 
your Lordship's leisure, to present a peece, for matter and 
model so unworthy, and in this scribbling age, wherein great 
persons are so pestered dayly with Dedications. All I can 
alledge in extenuation of so many incongruities, is the bequest 
of a deceased Man ; who (in his lifetime) having offered some 

1 An examination of a copy of the book in the Bodleian — none is in the British 
Museum — shows that the dedication is signed J. H., and not, as Mr. Fleay infers, 
by Thorpe. Thorpe had no concern in this volume. 



4IO WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

translations of his unto your Lordship, ever wisht if these 
ensuing were published they might onely bee addressed unto 
your Lordship, as the last Testimony of his dutifull affection (to 
use his own termes) The true and reall upholder of Learned 
endeavors. This, therefore, beeing left unto mee, as a Legacie 
unto your Lordship (pardon my presumption, great Lord, from 
so meane a man to so great a person) I could not without some 
impiety present it to any other ; such a sad priviledge have the 
bequests of the dead, and so obligatory they are, more than the 
requests of the living. In the hope of this honourable accept- 
ance I will ever rest, 

' Your lordship's humble devoted, 

<T. Th. 1 

With such obeisances did publishers then habitually creep 
into the presence of the nobility. In fact, the law which 
rigorously maintained the privileges of peers left them no 
option. The alleged erroneous form of address in the dedica- 
tion of Shakespeare's i Sonnets 1 — ' Mr. W. H.' for Lord Herbert 
or the Earl of Pembroke — would have amounted to the offence 
of defamation. And for that misdemeanour the Star Chamber, 
always acting in protecting the dignity of peers, would have 
promptly called Thorpe to account. 1 

Of the Earl of Pembroke, and of his brother the Earl of 
Montgomery, it was stated a few years later, ' from just obser- 
vation, 1 on very pertinent authority, that ' no men came near 
their lordships [in their capacity of literary patrons], but with a 
kind of religious address.' These words figure in the prefatory 
epistle which two actor-friends of Shakespeare addressed to the 
two Earls in the posthumously issued First Folio of the 
dramatist's works. Thorpe's ; kind of religious address ' on 
seeking Lord Pembroke's patronage for Healey's books was 
somewhat more unctuous than was customary or needful. But 
of erring conspicuously in an opposite direction he may, without 
misgiving, be pronounced innocent. 

1 On January 27, 1607-8, one Sir Henry Colte was indicted for slander in the Star 
Chamber for addressing a peer, Lord Morley, as ' goodman Morley.' A technical 
defect — the omission of the precise date of the commission of the alleged offence — in 
the bill of indictment led to a dismissal of the cause. See Les Reportes d-et Cases 
in Camera Stellata, 1593 to 1609, edited from the manuscript of Henry Hawarde by 
W. P. Baildon, F.S.A. (privately printed for Alfred Morrison), p. 348. 



SHAKESPEARE AND THE EARL OF PEMBROKE 411 



VII 

SHAKESPEARE AND THE EARL OF 
PEMBROKE 

With the disposal of the allegation that 'Mr. W. H." repre- 
sented the Earl of Pembroke's youthful name, the whole theory 
of that Earl's identity with Shakespeare's friend collapses. 
Outside Thorpe's dedicatory words, only two scraps of evidence 
with any title to consideration have been adduced to show that 
Shakespeare was at any time or in any way associated with 
Pembroke. 

In the late autumn of 1603 James I and his Court were 
installed at the Earl of Pembroke's house at Wilton for a period 
Shake- of two months, owing to the prevalence of the plague 

spearewith in London. By order of the officers of the royal 

the acting household, the King's company of players, of which 

companvat ' & L - r - 

Wilton i'n Shakespeare was a member, gave a performance 

1603. before the King at Wilton House on December 2. 

The actors travelled from Mortlake for the purpose, and were 
paid in the ordinary manner by the treasurer of the royal house- 
hold, out of the public funds. There is no positive evidence that 
Shakespeare attended at Wilton with the company, but assum- 
ing, as is probable, that he did, the Earl of Pembroke can be 
held no more responsible for his presence than for his repeated 
presence under the same conditions at Whitehall. The visit of 
the King's players to Wilton in 1603 has no bearing on the Earl 
of Pembroke's alleged relations with Shakespeare. 1 

1 See pp. 231-2, supra. A tradition has lately sprung up in Wilton to the effect 
that a letter once existed there in which the Countess of Pembroke bade her son the 
Earl while he was in attendance on James I at Salisbury to bring the King to Wilton 
to witness a performance of As You Like It. The Countess is said to have added, 
' We have the man Shakespeare with us.' Xo tangible evidence of the existence of 
the letter is forthcoming and its tenor stamps it, if it exists, as an ignorant in- 
vention. The circumstances under which both King and players visited Wilton in 
1603 are completely misrepresented. The Court temporarily occupied Wilton 



412 , WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

The second instance of the association in the seventeenth 
century of Shakespeare's name with Pembroke's tells wholly 
The dedi- against the conjectured intimacy. Seven years 
cation of a f ter t j le d ram atist 1 s death, two of his friends and 
Folio. fellow-actors prepared the collective edition of 

his plays known as the First Folio, and they dedicated the 
volume, in the conventional language of eulogy, ' To the most 
noble and incomparable paire of brethren, William Earl of 
Pembroke. &c. Lord Chamberlaine to the King's most excel- 
lent Majesty, and Philip, Earl of Montgomery, &c, Gentleman 
of His Majesties Bedchamber. Both Knights of the most 
Noble Order of the Garter and our singular good Lords. 1 

The choice of such patrons, whom, as the dedication inti- 
mated, 'no one came near but with a kind of religious address,' 
proves no private sort of friendship between them and the dead 
author. To the two Earls in partnership nearly every work of 
any literary pretension was dedicated at the period. Moreover, 
the third Earl of Pembroke was Lord Chamberlain in 1623, and 
exercised supreme authority in theatrical affairs. That his 
patronage should be sought for a collective edition of the works 
of the acknowledged master of the contemporary stage was a 
matter of course. It is only surprising that the editors should 
have yielded to the passing vogue of soliciting the patronage of 
the Lord Chamberlain's brother in conjunction with the Lord 
Chamberlain. 

The sole sentence in the editors dedication that can be held 

House, and Shakespeare and his comrades were ordered by the officers of the royal 
household to give a performance there in the same way as they would have been 
summoned to play before the King had he been at Whitehall. It is hardly necessary 
to add that the Countess of Pembroke's mode of referring to literary men is well 
known; she treaied them on terms of equality, and could not in any aberration of 
mind or temper have referred to Shakespeare as ' the man Shakespeare.' Similarly, 
the present Earl of Pembroke purchased of a London picture-dealer last year what 
purported to be a portrait of the third Earl of Pembroke, and on the back was pasted 
a paper, that was represented to date from the seventeenth century, containing some 
lines from Shakespeare's Sonnet lxxxi. (9-14), subscribed with the words 'Shake- 
speare unto the Earl of Pembroke, 1603.' The ink and handwriting are quite modern, 
and hardly make pretence to be of old date in the eyes of any one accustomed to 
study manuscripts. On May 5 of this year some persons interested in the matter, in- 
cluding myself, examined the portrait and the inscription, on the kind invitation of 
the present Earl, and the inscription was unanimously declared by palatograph ical 
experts to be a clumsy forgery unworthy of serious notice. 



SHAKESPEARE AND THE EARL OF PEMBROKE 413 

to bear on the question of Shakespeare's alleged intimacy with 
Pembroke is their remark that both Earls had 'prosequuted,' 
i.e. favoured, the plays 'and their authour living.' But this 
assertion only justifies the inference that the brothers shared 
the enthusiastic esteem which James I and all the noblemen 
of his Court extended to Shakespeare and his plays in the 
dramatist's lifetime. Apart from his work as a dramatist. 
Shakespeare, in his capacity of one of ' the King's servants ' or 
company of players, was personally known to all the officers of 
the royal household who collectively controlled theatrical 
representations at Court. Throughout James I's reign his plays 
were repeatedly performed in the royal presence, and when the 
dedicators of the First Folio, at the conclusion of their address 
to Lords Pembroke and Montgomery, describe the dramatist's 
works as ' these remaines of your Servant Shakespeare,' they 
make it quite plain that it was in the capacity of i King's 
servant ' or player that they knew him to have been the object 
of their noble patrons 1 favour. 

The sonnets offer no internal indication that the Earl of 
Pembroke and Shakespeare ever saw one another. Nothing at 
all is deducible from the vague parallelisms that have been 
adduced between the Earl's character and position in life and 
those with which the poet credited the youth of the sonnets. 
It may be granted that both had a mother (Sonnet iii.), that 
both enjoyed wealth and rank, that both were regarded by 
admirers as cultivated, that both were self-indulgent in their 
relations with women, and that both in early manhood were 
No su'gges- indisposed to marry, owing to habits of gallantry, 
sonnets of Of one alleged point of resemblance there is no 
the youth's evidence. The loveliness assigned to Shakespeare's 
withP m y° ut h was not ' as f ar as we can learn, definitely set 
broke. to Pembroke's account. Francis Davison, when 

dedicating his 'Poetical Rhapsody' to the Earl in 1602 in a 
very eulogistic sonnet, makes a cautiously qualified reference 
to the attractiveness of his person in the lines : 

[His] outward shape, though it most lovely be, 
Doth in fair robes a fairer soul attire. 

The only portraits of him that survive represent him in middle 



414 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

age, 1 and seem to confute the suggestion that he was 
reckoned handsome at any time of life ; at most they confirm 
Anthony Wood's description of him as in person 4 rather 
majestic than elegant.' But the point is not one of moment, 
and the argument neither gains nor loses, if we allow that 
Pembroke may, at any rate in the sight of a poetical panegyrist, 
have at one period reflected, like Shakespeare's youth, ' the 
lovely April of his mother's prime.' 

But when we have reckoned up the traits that can, on 
any showing, be admitted to be common to both Pembroke and 
Shakespeare's alleged friend, they all proved to be equally 
indistinctive. All could be matched without difficulty in a score 
of youthful noblemen and gentlemen of Elizabeth's Court. 
Direct external evidence of Shakespeare's friendly intercourse 
with one or other of Elizabeth's young courtiers must be produced 
before the sonnets' general references to the youth's beauty 
and grace can render the remotest assistance in establishing his 
identity. 

Although it may be reckoned superfluous to adduce more 

arguments, negative or positive, against the theory that the 

Earl of Pembroke was a youthful friend of Shakespeare, it is 

worth noting that John Aubrey, the Wiltshire antiquary, and the 

biographer of most Englishmen of distinction of the sixteenth 

and seventeenth centuries, was zealously researching, from 1650 

onwards, into the careers alike of Shakespeare and of various 

members of the Earl of Pembroke's family — one of the chief 

Aubrey's in Wiltshire. Aubrey rescued from oblivion many 

ignorance anecdotes — scandalous and otherwise — about both 

relation the third Earl of Pembroke and about Shakespeare. 

between of the former he wrote in his < Natural History of Wilt- 
Shake- 
speare and smre 1 (ed. Britton, 1847), recalling the Earl's rela- 

Pembroke. tions with Massinger and many other men of letters. 

Of Shakespeare, Aubrey narrated much lively gossip in his ' Lives 

of Eminent Persons.' But neither in his account of Pembroke 

nor in his account of Shakespeare does he give any hint that 

they were at any time or in any manner acquainted or associated 

with one another. Had close relations existed between them. 

1 Cf. the engravings of Simon Pass, Stent, and Vandervoerst, after the portrait 
by My tens. 



SHAKESPEARE AND THE EARL OF PEMBROKE 415 

it is impossible that all trace of it would have faded from the 
traditions that were current in Aubrey's time and were embodied 
in his writings. 1 

1 It is unnecessary, after what has been said above (p. 123), to consider seriously 
the suggestion that the ' dark lady ' of the sonnets was Mary Fitton, maid of honour 
to Queen Elizabeth. This frolicsome lady, who was at one time Pembroke's 
mistress and bore him a child, has been only introduced into a discussion of the 
sonnets on the assumption that her lover, Pembroke, was the youth to whom the 
sonnets were addressed. Lady Newdegate's recently published Gossip front a 
Muniment Rocm, which furnishes for the first time a connected biography of 
Pembroke's mistress, adequately disposes of any lingering hope that Shakespeare 
may have commemorated her in his black-complexioned heroine. Lady Newdegate 
states that two well-preserved portraits of Mary Fitton remain at Arbury, and that 
they reveal a lady of fair complexion with brown hair and grey eyes. Family history 
places the authenticity of the portraits beyond doubt, and the endeavour lately made 
by Mr. Tyler, the chief champion of the hopeless Fitton theory, to dispute their 
authenticity is satisfactorily met by Mr. C. O. Bridgeman in an appendix to the 
second edition of Lady Newdegate's book. We also learn from Lady Newdegate's 
volume that Miss Fitton, during her girlhood, was pestered by the attentions of a 
middle-aged admirer, a married friend of the family, Sir William Knollys. It has 
been lamely suggested by some of the supporters of the Pembroke theory that Sir 
William Knollys was one of the persons named Will who are alleged to be noticed 
as competitors with Shakespeare and the supposititious ' Will Herbert ' for ' the 
dark lady's' favours in the sonnets (cxxxv., cxxxvi , and perhaps clxiii.). But that 
is a shot wholly out of range. The wording of those sonnets, when it is thoroughly 
tested, proves beyond reasonable doubt that the poet was the only lover named Will 
who is represented as courting the disdainful lady of the sonnets, and that no refer- 
ence whatever is made there to any other person of that Christian name. 



416 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



VIII 

THE ' WILL' SONNETS 

No one has had the hardihood to assert that the text of the 
sonnets gives internally any indication that the youth's name 
took the hapless form of 'William Herbert'; but many com- 
mentators argue that in three or four sonnets Shakespeare 
admits in so many words that the youth bore his own Christian 
name of Will, and even that the disdainful lady had among her 
admirers other gentlemen entitled in familiar intercourse to 
similar designation. These are fantastic assumptions which 
rest on a misconception of Shakespeare's phraseology and of 
the character of the conceits of the sonnets, and are solely 
attributable to the fanatical anxiety of the supporters of the 
Pembroke theory to extort, at all hazards, some sort of evi- 
dence in their favour from Shakespeare's text. 1 

In two sonnets (cxxxv.-vi.) — the most artificial and 'con- 
ceited' in the collection — the poet plays somewhat enig- 
matically on his Christian name of i Will,' and a similar 
pun has been doubtfully detected in Sonnets cxxxiv. and 
cxlvii. The groundwork of the pleasantry is the identity 
in form of the proper name with the common noun ' will.' 
Elizabeth- This word connoted in Elizabethan English a 
fmrsTof 111 " generous variety of conceptions, of most of which 
'will.' it has long since been deprived. Then, as now, it 

was employed in the general psychological sense of volition ; 
but it was more often specifically applied to two limited 
manifestations of the volition. It was the commonest of syno- 
nyms alike for ' self-will ' or ' stubbornness ' — in which sense it 

1 Professor Dowden (Sonnets, p. xxxv.) writes: ' It appears from the punning 
sonnets (cxxxv. and cxliii.) that the Christian name of Shakespeare's friend was the 
same as his own, Will,' and thence is deduced the argument that the friend could 
only be identical with one who, like William, Earl of Pembroke, bore that Christian 
name, 



THE 'WILL' SONNETS 417 

still survives in 'wilful' — and for 'lust 1 or 'sensual passion. 1 
It also did occasional duty for its own diminutive 'wish,' for 
' caprice, 1 for ' good-will, 1 and for ' free consent 1 (as nowadays in 
' willing 1 or ' willingly ? ) . 

Shakespeare constantly used i will ' in all these significa- 
tions. Iago recognised its general psychological value when 
Shake- he said, ' Our bodies are our gardens, to the which 

uses of toe our w ^ s are gardeners. 1 The conduct of the 'will 1 
word. is discussed after the manner of philosophy in 

'Troilus and Cressida ' (11. ii. 51-68). In another of Iago's 
sentences, ' Love is merely a lust of the blood and a permission 
of the will, 1 light is shed on the process by which the word came 
to be specifically applied to sensual desire. The last is a 
favourite sense with Shakespeare and his contemporaries. 
Angelo and Isabella, in ' Measure for Measure, 1 are at one in 
attributing their conflict to the former's ' will. 1 The self-indul- 
gent Bertram, in ' AlPs Well, 1 ' fleshes his " will 11 in the spoil of 
a gentlewoman's honour. 1 In 'Lear' (iv. vi. 279) Regan's 
heartless plot to seduce her brother-in-law is assigned to 'the 
undistinguished space ' — the boundless range — ' of woman's 
will. 1 Similarly, Sir Philip Sidney apostrophised lust as ' thou 
web of will.' Thomas Lodge, in ' Phillis ' (Sonnet xi.) warns 
lovers of the ruin that menaces all who ' guide their course by 
will. 1 Nicholas Breton's fantastic romance of 1599, entitled 
< The Will of Wit, Wit's Will or Will's Wit, Chuse you 
Whether, 1 is especially rich in like illustrations. Breton brings 
into marked prominence the antithesis which was familiar in 
his day between ' will ' in its sensual meaning, and ' wit,' the 
Elizabethan synonym for reason or cognition. ' A song between 
Wit and Will ' opens thus : 

Wit: What art thou, Will ? Will: A babe of nature's brood. 
Wit : Who was thy sire ? Will : Sweet Lust, as lovers say. 



Wit 
Wit: 
Wit 
Wit : 



Thy mother who ? Will: Wild lusty wanton blood. 
When wast thou born ? Will : In merry month of May. 
And where brought up ? Will : In school of little skill. 
What learn'dst thou there ? Will : Love is my lesson still. 



Of the use of the word in the sense of stubbornness or self-will 
Roger Ascham gives a good instance in his ' Schoolmaster, 1 

2 E 



41 8 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

(1570), where he recommends that such a vice in children as 
1 will, 1 which he places in the category of lying, sloth, and 
disobedience, should be • with sharp chastisement daily cut 
away." 1 "A woman will have her will 1 was, among Elizabethan 
wags, an exceptionally popular proverbial phrase, the point of 
which revolved about the equivocal meaning of the last word. 
The phrase supplied the title of 'a pleasant comedy,' by Will- 
iam Haughton, which — from 1597 onwards — held the stage 
for the unusually prolonged period of forty years. * Women, 
because they cannot have their wills when they dye, they will 
have their wills while they live, 1 was a current witticism which 
the barrister Manningham deemed worthy of record in his ' Diary 1 
in 1602. 2 

It was not only in the sonnets that Shakespeare — almost 
invariably with a glance at its sensual significance — rang the 
changes on this many-faced verbal token. In his earliest play, 
•Love's Labour's Lost 1 (11. i. 97-101), after the princess has 
tauntingly assured the King of Navarre that he will break his 

vow to avoid women's society, the king replies, ' Not 
speare's f° r tne world, fair madam, by my will ' (i.e. willingly), 
puns on The princess retorts ' Why will (i.e. sensual desire) 

shall break it (i.e. the vow), will and nothing else. 1 
In 'Much Ado, 1 when Benedick, anxious to marry Beatrice, is 
asked by the lady's father 'What's your will? 1 he playfully 
lingers on the word in his answer. As for his ' will, 1 his 'will 1 
is that the father's 'good-will may stand with his 1 and Beatrice's 
' will ' — in other words that the father may consent to their 
union. Slender and Anne Page vary the tame sport when the 
former misinterprets the young lady's 'What is your will?' into 
an inquiry into the testamentary disposition of his property. 
To what depth of vapidity Shakespeare and contemporary 
punsters could sink is nowhere better illustrated than in the 
favour they bestowed on efforts to extract amusement from the 
parities and disparities of form and meaning subsisting between 
the words ' will ' and ' wish,' the latter being in vernacular use 

1 Ed. Mayor, p. 35. 

2 Manningham's Diary, p. 92; cf. Barnabe Barnes's Odes Pastoral, sestine 2: 

But women will have their own wills, 
Alas, why then should I.complain? 



THE 'WILL' SONNETS 419 

as a diminutive of the former. Twice in the * Two Gentlemen 
of Verona ' (1. iii. 63 and iv. ii. 96) Shakespeare almost strives 
to invest with the flavour of epigram the unpretending announce- 
ment that one interlocutors ' wish ' is in harmony with another 
interlocutor's 'will.' 

It is in this vein of pleasantry — ' will ' and ' wish ' are 
identically contrasted in Sonnet cxxxv. — that Shakespeare, to 
the confusion of modern readers, makes play with the word 
' will ' in the sonnets, and especially in the two sonnets 
(cxxxv.-vi.) which alone speciously justify the delusion that the 
lady is courted by two, or more than two, lovers of the name of 
Will. 

One of the chief arguments advanced in favour of this 
interpretation is that the word ' will ' in these sonnets is 
frequently italicised in the original edition. But this has 
little or no bearing on the argument. The corrector of the 
Arbitrary press recognised that Sonnets cxxxv. and cxxxvi. 
and irregu- largely turned upon a simple pun between the 
italics by writer's name of ' Will ' and the lady's l will. 1 That 
Elizabethan f ac t, and no other, he indicated very roughly by 
bean print- occasionally italicising the crucial word. Typography 
ers. at the time followed no firmly fixed rules, and, although 

' will ' figures in a more or less punning sense nineteen times in 
these sonnets, the printer only bestowed on the word the 
distinction of italics in ten instances, and those were selected 
arbitrarily. The italics indicate the obvious equivoque, and 
indicate it imperfectly. That is the utmost that can be laid to 
their credit. They give no hint of the far more complicated 
punning that is alleged by those who believe that ' Will ' is used 
now as the name of the writer, and now as that of one or more 
of the rival suitors. In each of the two remaining sonnets that 
have been forced into the service of the theory, Nos. cxxxiv. and 
cxliii., l will ' occurs once only ; it alone is italicised in the second 
sonnet in the original edition, and there in my opinion arbitrarily 
and without just cause. 1 

1 Besides punning words, printers of poetry in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries made an effort to italicise proper names, unfamiliar words, and words deemed 
worthy of special emphasis. But they did not strictly adhere to these rules, and, 
while they often failed to italicise the words that deserved italicisation. they freely 



420 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

The general intention of the complex conceits of Sonnets 
cxxxv. and cxxxvi. becomes obvious when we bear in mind 
The con- that in them Shakespeare exploits to the uttermost 
ceits of Son- t ] ie verDa i coincidences which are inherent in the 

nets cxxxv 

vi. inter-' ' Elizabethan word * will. 1 ' Will ' is the Christian 
preted. name of the enslaved writer ; ' will ' is the sentiment 

with which the lady inspires her worshippers; and 'will' 
designates stubbornness as well as sensual desire. These two 
characteristics, according to the poet's reiterated testimony, are 
the distinguishing marks of the lady's disposition. He often 
dwells elsewhere on her * proud heart 1 or 'foul pride, 1 and her 
sensuality or 'foul faults. 1 These are her 'wills, 1 and they 
make up her being. In crediting the lady with such a 
constitution Shakespeare was not recording any definite ob- 
servation or experience of his own, but he followed, as was 
his custom, the conventional descriptions of the disdainful 
mistress common to all contemporary collections of sonnets. 
Barnabe asks the lady celebrated in his sonnets, from whose 
' proud disdainfulness ' he suffered, 

Why dost thou my delights delay, 

And with thy cross unkindness kills (sic) 

Mine heart, bound martyr to thy wills ? 

Barnes answers his question in the next lines : 

But women will have their own wills, 
Since what she lists her heart fulfils. 1 

Similar passages abound in Elizabethan sonnets, but 
certain verbal similarities give good ground for regarding 
Shakespeare's ' will ' sonnets as deliberate adaptations — doubt- 
less with satiric purpose — of Barnes's stereotyped reflections 
on women's obduracy. The form and the constant repetition of 
the word ' will ' in these two sonnets of Shakespeare also seem 
to imitate derisively the same rival's Sonnets lxxii. and lxxiii. 
in which Barnes puts the words • grace ' and ' graces ' through 

italicised others that did not merit it. Capital initial letters were employed with like 
irregularity. Mr. Wyndham in his careful note on the typography of the quarto of 
1609 (pp. 259 seq.) suggests that Elizabethan printers were not erratic in their 
uses of italics or capital letters, but an examination of a very large number of 
Elizabethan and Jacobean books has brought me to an exactly opposite conclusion. 
1 Barnes's Parthenophil va. Arber's Gamer, v. 440. 



THE 'WILL' SONNETS 42 1 

much the same evolutions as Shakespeare puts the words i will ' 
and i wills ' in the Sonnets cxxxv. and cxxxvi. 1 
Shakespeare's ' Sonnet ' cxxxv. runs : 

Whoever hath her wish, thou hast thy Will, 
And will to boot, and will in over-plus ; 
More than enough am I that vex thee still, 
To thy sweet will making addition thus. 
Wilt thou, whose will is large and spacious, 2 
Not once vouchsafe to hide my will in thine? 
Shall will in others seem right gracious, 
And in my will no fair acceptance shine? 
The sea, all water, yet receives rain still, 
And in abundance addeth to his store; 
So thou, being rich in will, add to thy will, 
One will of mine, to make thy large will more. 

Let no unkind no fair beseechers kill ; 

Think all but one, and me in that one — Will. 

In the opening words, ' Whoever hath her wish, 1 the poet 
prepares the reader for the punning encounter by a slight 

variation on the current catch-phrase i A woman will 
cxxxv 6 have her will.' At the next moment we are in the 

thick of the wordy fray. The lady has not only her 
lover named Will, but untold stores of ' will ' — in the sense alike 
of stubbornness and of lust — to which it seems supererogatory 
to make addition. 3 To the lady's 'over-plus' of 'will' is 
punningly attributed her defiance of the " will ' of her suitor 
Will to enjoy her favours. At the same time 'will 1 in others 

1 After quibbling in Sonnet Ixxii on the resemblance between the graces of 
his cruel mistress's face and the Graces of classical mythology, Barnes develops the 
topic in the next sonnet after this manner (the italics are my own) : 

Why did rich Nature graces grant to thee, 

Since thou art such a niggard of thy grace! 

O how caii graces in thy body be? 

Where neither they nor pity find a place! . . . 

Grant me some grace! For thou with grace art wealthy 

And kindly may'st afford some gracious thing. 

2 Cf. Lear, iv. vi. 279, ' O undistinguish'd space of woman's will '; i.e. ' O bound- 
less range of woman's lust.' 

3 Professor Dowden says ' will to boot ' is a reference to the Christian name of 
Shakespeare's friend, ' William [ ? Mr. W. H.] ' (Sonnets, p. 236) ; but in my view the 
poet, in the second line of the sonnet, only seeks emphasis by repetition in accord- 



422 WILLTAM SHAKESPEARE 

proves to her s right gracious, 1 1 although in him it is unaccept- 
able. All this, the poet hazily argues, should be otherwise ; for 
as the sea, although rich in water, does not refuse the falling 
rain, but freely adds it to its abundant store, so she, < rich in 
will, 1 should accept her lover Will's ' will 1 and ' make her large 
will more. 1 The poet sums up his ambition in the final couplet : 

Let no unkind no fair beseechers kill ; 
Think all but one, and me in that one — Will. 

This is as much as to say, ' Let not my mistress in her unkind- 
ness kill any of her fair-spoken adorers. Rather let her think 
all who beseech her favours incorporate in one alone of her 
lovers — and that one the writer whose name of "Will 1 ' is a 
synonym for the passions that dominate her. 1 The thought is 
wiredrawn to inanity, but the words make it perfectly clear that 
the poet was the only one of the lady^ lovers — to the definite 
exclusion of all others — whose name justified the quibbing 
pretence of identity with the ' will 1 which controls her being. 

The same equivocating conceit of the poet WilPs title to 
identity with the lady^ ' will , in all senses is pursued in Sonnet 
cxxxvi. The sonnet opens : 

If thy soul check thee that I come so near, 
Swear to thy blind soul that I was thy will, 2 
And will thy soul knows is admitted there. 

Here Shakespeare adapts to his punning purpose the familiar 
Sonnet philosophic commonplace respecting the souTs domi- 

cxxxvi. nation by < will ' or volition, which was more clearly 

ance with no uncommon practice of his. The line ' And will to boot, and will in 
over-plus,' is paralleled in its general form and intention in such lines of other 
sonnets as 

Kind is my love to-day, to-morrow kind (cv. 5). 

Beyond all date, even to eternity (cxxii. 4). 

Who art as black as hell, as dark as night (cxlvii. 14). 

In all these instances the second half of the line merely repeats the first half with a 
slight intensification. 

1 Cf. Barnes's Sonnet lxxiii. : 

All her looks gracious, yet no grace do bring 
To me, poor wretch! Yet be the Graces there. 

2 Shakespeare refers to the blindness, the ' sightless view ' of the soul, in Sonnet 
xxvii., and apostrophises the soul as the ' centre of his sinful earth ' in Sonnet cxlvi. 



THE 'WILL' SONNETS 423 

expressed by his contemporary, Sir John Davies, in the philo- 
sophic poem, 'Nosce Teipsum 1 : 

Will holds the royal sceptre in the soul, 
And on the passions of the heart doth reign. 

Whether Shakespeare's lines be considered with their context 
or without it, the tenor of their thought and language positively 
refutes the commentators 1 notion that the ' will ? admitted to the 
lady's soul is a rival lover named Will. The succeeding lines 

run : 

Thus far for love, my love-suit, sweet, fulfil. 1 
Will will fulfil the treasure of thy love ; 
Ay, fill it full with wills, and my will one. 
In things of great receipt with ease we prove 
Among a number one is reckon'd none : 
Then in the number let me pass untold, 
Though in thy stores' account, I one must be ; 
For nothing hold me, so it please thee hold 
That nothing me, a something sweet to thee. 

Here the poet Will continues to claim, in punning right of 
his Christian name, a place, however small and inconspicuous, 
among the i wills,' the varied forms of will (i.e. lust, stubborn- 
ness, and willingness to accept others' attentions), which are the 
constituent elements of the lady's being. The plural ' wills ' is 
twice used in identical sense by Barnabe Barnes in the lines 
already quoted : 

Mine heart, bound martyr to thy wills, 
But women will have their own wills. 

Impulsively Shakespeare brings his fantastic pretension to 
a somewhat more practical issue in the concluding apostrophe : 

Make but my name thy love, and love that still, 
And then thou lovest me — for my name is Will. 2 

1 The use of the word ' fulfil ' in this and the next line should be compared with 
Barnes's introduction of the word in a like context in the passage given above : 

Since what she lists her heart fulfils. 

2 Mr. Tyler paraphrases these lines thus: ' You love your other admirer named 
" Will." Love the name alone, and then you love me, for my name is Will,' p. 297. 
Professor Dowden, hardly more illuminating, says the lines mean: ' Love only my 
name (something less than loving myself), and then thou lovest me, for my name is 
Will, and I myself am all will, i.e. all desire.' 



424 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

That is equivalent to saying ' Make "will " 1 (i.e. that which is 
yourself) 'your love, and then you love me, because Will is my 
name.' The couplet proves even more convincingly than the 
one which clinches the preceding sonnet that none of the rivals 
whom the poet sought to displace in the lady's affections could 
by any chance have been, like himself, called Will. The writer 
could not appeal to a mistress to concentrate her love on his 
name of Will, because it was the emphatic sign of identity 
between her being and him, if that name were common to him 
and one or more rivals, and lacked exclusive reference to him- 
self. 

Loosely as Shakespeare's sonnets were constructed, the 
couplet at the conclusion of each poem invariably summarises 
the general intention of the preceding twelve lines. The con- 
cluding couplets of these two sonnets cxxxv.-vi., in which 
Shakespeare has been alleged to acknowledge a rival of his 
own name in his suit for a lady's favour, are consequently the 
touchstone by which the theory of ; more Wills than one 1 must 
be tested. As we have just seen, the situation is summarily 
embodied in the first couplet thus : 

Let no unkind no fair beseechers kill ; 
Think all but one, and me in that one — Will. 

It is re-embodied in the second couplet thus : 

Make but my name thy love, and love that still, 
And then thou lovest me — for my name is Will. 

The whole significance of both couplets resides in the 
twice-repeated fact that one, and only one, of the lady's lovers 
is named Will, and that that one is the writer. To assume that 
the poet had a rival of his own name is to denude both couplets 
of all point. * Will, 1 we have learned from the earlier lines of 
both sonnets, is the lady's ruling passion. Punning mock-logic 
brings the poet in either sonnet to the ultimate conclusion that 
one of her lovers may, above all others, reasonably claim her 
love on the ground that his name of Will is the name of her 
riding passion. Thus his pretension to her affections rest, he 
punningly assures her, on a strictly logical basis. 



THE 'WILL' SONNETS 425 



Unreasonable as any other interpretation of these sonnets 
(cxxxv.-vi.) seems to be, I believe it far more 
fatuous to seek in the single and isolated use of the 

CX XXIV. ° 

word 'will 1 in each of the sonnets cxxxiv. and 
cxliii. any confirmation of the theory of a rival suitor named 
Will. 

Sonnet cxxxiv. runs : 

So now I have confess'd that he is thine, 
And I myself am mortgaged to thy will. 1 
Myself I'll forfeit, so that other mine 
Thou wilt restore, to be my comfort still. 
But thou wilt not, nor he will not be free, 
For thou art covetous and he is kind. 
He learn'd but surety-like to write for me, 
Under that bond that him as fast doth bind. 
The statute of thy beauty thou wilt take, 
Thou usurer, that putt'st forth all to use, 
And sue a friend came debtor for my sake ; 
So him I lose through my unkind abuse. 

Him have I lost ; thou hast both him and me ; 

He pays the whole, and yet am I not free. 

Here the poet describes himself as ' mortgaged to the lady's 
will ■ {i.e. to her personality, in which 'will,' in the double sense 
of stubbornness and sensual passion, is the strongest element). 
He deplores that the lady has captivated not merely himself, 
but- also his friend, who made vicarious advances to her. 

Sonnet cxliii. runs : 

Lo, as a careful housewife runs to catch 
One of her feathered creatures broke away, 
Sets down her babe, and makes all swift despatch 
In pursuit of the thing she would have stay; 
Whilst her neglected child holds her in chase, 
Cries to catch her whose busy care is bent 
To follow that which flies before her face, 
Not prizing her poor infant's discontent : 



1 The word ' Will ' is not here italicised in the original edition of Shakespeare's 
sonnets, and there is no ground whatever for detecting in it any sort of pun. The 
line resembles Barnes's line quoted above: 

Mine heart bound martyr to thy wills. 



426 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

So runn'st thou after that which flies from thee, 

Whilst I, thy babe, chase thee afar behind; 

But if thou catch thy hope turn back to me, 

And play the mother's part, kiss me, be kind : 
So will I pray that thou mayst have thy will, 1 
If thou turn back and my loud crying still. 

In this sonnet — which presents a very clear-cut picture, 

although its moral is somewhat equivocal — the poet represents 

,. . r the lady as a country housewife and himself as her 
Meaning 01 J . -' 

Sonnet babe ; while an acquaintance, who attracts the 

cxliii. lady but is not attracted by her, is figured as a 

'feathered creature ' in the housewife's poultry-yard. The fowl 
takes to flight ; the housewife sets down her infant and pursues 
' the thing.' The poet, believing apparently that he has little 
to fear from the harmless creature, lightly makes play with the 
current catch-phrase ('a woman will have her will 1 ), and 
amiably wishes his mistress success in her chase, on condition 
that, having recaptured the truant bird, she turn back and treat 
him, her babe, with kindness. In praying that the lady 'may 
have her will 1 the poet is clearly appropriating the current catch- 
phrase, and no pun on a man's name of ' Will ' can be fairly 
wrested from the context. 

1 Because ' will ' by what is almost certainly a typographical accident is here 
printed Will'va. the first edition of the sonnets, Professor Dowden is inclined to accept 
a reference to the supposititious friend Will, and to believe the poet to pray that the 
lady may have her Will, i.e. the friend ' Will [ ? W. H.].' This interpretation seems 
to introduce a needless complication. 



VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 427 



IX 

THE VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN 

SONNET, 1 591-1597 

The sonnetteering vogue, as I have already pointed out, 1 
reached its full height between 1591 and 1597, and when at its 
briskest in 1594 it drew Shakespeare into its current. An 
enumeration of volumes containing sonnet-sequences or de- 
tached sonnets that were in circulation during the period best 
illustrates the overwhelming force of the sonnetteering rage of 
those years, and, with that end in view, I give here a biblio- 
graphical account, with a few critical notes of the chief efforts 
of Shakespeare's rival sonnetteers. 2 

The earliest collections of sonnets to be published in 
England were those by the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas 
Wvatt's Wyatt, which first appeared in the publisher TottePs 
and Sur- poetical miscellany called i Songes and Sonnetes ' in 

revs Son- \ccy. This volume included sixteen sonnets by Sur- 
nets, pub- JDI J 

listed. in rey and twenty by Wyatt. Many of them weretrans- 

I 557- lated directly from Petrarch, and most of them treated 

conventionally of the torments of an unrequited love. Surrey 

included, however, three sonnets on the death of his friend 

1 See p 83, supra. 

2 The word ' sonnet ' was often irregularly used for ' song ' or ' poem.' ' A proper 
sonnet ' in Clement Robinson's poetical anthology, A Handefull of Pleasatit Delites, 
1584, is a lyric in ten four-line alternatively rhymed stanzas. Neither Barnabe 
Googe's Eglogs, Epyttaphes, and Somiettes, 1563, nor George Turbervile's Epi- 
taphes, Epigrams, Songs and Sonets, 1567, contains a single fourteen-lined poem. 
The French word 'quatorzain' was the term almost as frequently applied as ' sonnet' 
to the fourteen-line stanza in regular sonnet form, which alone falls within my sur- 
vey. Watson is congratulated on ' scaling the skies in lofty quatorzains ' in verses 
before his Passionate Centurie, 1582; cf. ' crazed quatorzains' in Thomas Nash's 
preface to his edition of Sidney's Astrophel and Stella, 1591 ; and Amours in Qua- 
torzains on the title-page of the first edition of Drayton's Sonnets, 1594. 



428 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

Wyatt, and a fourth on the death of one Clere, a faithful 
follower. TottePs volume was seven times reprinted by 1587. 
But no sustained endeavour was made to emulate the example 
of Surrey and Wyatt till Thomas Watson about 1580 circulated 
in manuscript his l Booke of Passionate Sonnetes,' which he 
wrote for his patron, the Earl of Oxford. The volume was 
printed in 1582, and under the title of < c EKATOMIIA©IA 
Watson's or Passionate Centurie of Loue. Divided into two 
' ?L ov? 1,6 P arts : whereof the first expresseth the Authours 
1582. sufferance on Loue : the latter his long farewell to 

Loue and all his tyrannic Composed by Thomas Watson, and 
published at the request of certaine Gentlemen his very frendes.' 
Watson's work, which he called 'a toy,' is a curious literary 
mosaic. He supplied to each poem a prose commentary, in 
which he not only admitted that every conceit was borrowed, 
but quoted chapter and verse for its origin from classical 
literature or from the work of French or Italian sonnetteers. 1 
Two regular quatorzains are prefixed, but to each of the 
'passions 1 there is appended a four-line stanza which gives 
each poem eighteen instead of the regular fourteen lines. 
Watson's efforts were so well received, however, that he applied 
himself to the composition of a second series of sonnets in strict 
metre. This collection, entitled l The Teares of Fancie, 1 only 
circulated in manuscript in his lifetime. 2 

Meanwhile a greater poet, Sir Philip Sidney, who died in 
1586, had written and circulated among his friends a more 
ambitious collection of a hundred and eight sonnets. 
' Astrophel Most of Sidney's sonnets were addressed by him under 
and Stella,' the name of Astrophel to a beautiful woman poetically 
I591 ' designated Stella. Sidney had in real life courted 

assiduously the favour of a married lady, Penelope, Lady Rich, 
and a few of the sonnets are commonly held to reflect the heat 
of passion which the genuine intrigue developed. But Petrarch, 
Ronsard, and Desportes inspired the majority of Sidney's 
efforts, and his addresses to abstractions like sleep, the moon, his 
muse, grief, or lust are almost verbatim translations from the 
French. Sidney's sonnets were first published surreptitiously, 

1 See p. 103, supra. 

2 All Watson's sonnets are reprinted by Mr. Arber in Watson's Poems, 1895. 



VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 429 

under the title of ' Astrophel and Stella, 1 by a publishing advent- 
urer named Thomas Newman, and in his first issue Newman 
added an appendix of ' sundry other rare sonnets by divers 
noblemen and gentlemen/ Twenty-eight sonnets by Daniel 
were printed in the appendix anonymously and without the 
author's knowledge. Two other editions of Sidney's 'Astrophel 
and Stella " without the appendix were issued in the same year. 
Eight other of Sidney's sonnets, which stili circulated only in 
manuscript, were first printed anonymously in 1594 with the 
sonnets of Henry Constable, and these were appended with 
some additions to the authentic edition of Sidney's 'Arcadia' 
and other works that appeared in 1598. Sidney enjoyed in the 
decade that followed his death the reputation of a demi-god. 
and the wide dissemination in print of his numerous sonnets in 
1 591 spurred nearly every living poet in England to emulate 
his achievement. 1 

In order to facilitate a comparison of Shakespeare's sonnets 
with those of his contemporaries it will be best to classify the 
sonnetteering efforts that immediately succeeded Sidney's under 
the three headings of (1) sonnets of more or less feigned love, 
addressed to a more or less fictitious mistress ; (2) sonnets of 
adulation, addressed to patrons ; and (3) sonnets invoking meta- 
physical abstractions or treating impersonally of religion or 
philosophy. 2 

In February 1592 Samuel Daniel published a collection of 
fifty-five sonnets, with a dedicatory sonnet addressed to his 
I. Collected patroness, Sidney's sister, the Countess of Pem- 
sonnets of broke. As in many French volumes, the collection 
love concluded with an b ode.' 3 At every point Daniel 

1 In a preface to Newman's first edition of Astrophel and Stella the editor, Thomas 
Nash, in a burst of exultation over what he deemed the surpassing merits of Sidney's 
sonnets, exclaimed: ' Put out your rushlights, you poets and rhymers ! and bequeath 
your crazed quatorzains to the chandlers! for lo, here he cometh that hath broken 
your legs.' But the effect of Sidney's work was just the opposite to that which 
Nash anticipated. It gave the sonnet in England a vogue that it never enjoyed 
before or since. 

2 With collections of sonnets of the first kind are occasionally interspersed 
sonnets of the second or third class, but I classify each sonnet-collection according 
to its predominant characteristic. 

3 Daniel reprinted all but nine of the sonnets that had been unwarrantably 
appended to Sidney's Astrophel. These nine he permanently dropped. 



430 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

betrayed his indebtedness to French sonnetteers, even when 
apologising for his inferiority to Petrarch (No. xxxviii.) . His title 
Daniel's ^ e Dorr o we d from the collection of Maurice Seve, whose 
' Delia,' assemblage of dixains called • Delie, objet de plus haute 
I 59 2 - vertu' (Lyon, 1544), was the pattern of all sonnet- 

sequences on love, and was a constant theme of commendation 
among the later French sonnetteers. But it is to Desportes 
that Daniel owes most, and his methods of handling his mate- 
rial may be judged by a comparison of his Sonnet xxvi. with 
Sonnet Ixiii. in Desportes's collection, ' Cleonice : Dernieres 
Amours,' which was issued at Paris in 1575. 
Desportes's sonnet runs : 

Je verray par les ans vengeurs de mon martyre 
Que l'or de vos cheveux argente deviendra, 
Que de vos deux soleils la splendeur s'esteindra, 

Et qu'il faudra qu' Amour tout confus s'en retire. 

La beaute qui si douce a present vous inspire } 
Cedant aux lois du Temps ses faveurs reprendra, 
L'hiver, de vostre teint les fleurettes perdra, 

Et ne laissera rien des thresors que i'admire. 

Cest orgueil desdaigneux qui vous fait ne m'aimer, 

En regret et chagrin se verra transformer, 

Avec le changement d'une image si belle : 
Et peut estre qu'alors vous n'aurez desplaisir 
De revivre en mes vers chauds d'amoureux desir, 

Ainsi que le Phenix au feu se renouvelle. 

This is Daniel's version, which he sent forth as an original 
production : 

I once may see, when years may wreck my wrong, 

And golden hairs may change to silver wire ; 

And those bright rays (that kindle all this fire) 
Shall fail in force, their power not so strong. 
Her beauty, now the burden of my song, 

Whose glorious blaze the world's eye doth admire ; 

Must yield her praise to tyrant Time's desire ; 
Then fades the flower, which fed her pride so long. 
When if she grieve to gaze her in her glass, 

Which then presents her winter-withered hue : 
Go you my verse ! go tell her what she was ! 

For what she was, she best may find in you. 
Your fiery heat lets not her glory pass, 

But Phoenix-like to make her live anew. 



VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 43 I 

In Daniel's beautiful sonnet (xlix.) beginning, 

Care-charmer sleep, son of the sable night, 
Brother to Death, in silent darkness born, 

he has borrowed much from De Baif and Pierre de Brach, sonnet- 
teers with whom it was a convention to invocate ' O Sommeil 
chasse-soin. 1 But again he chiefly relies on Desportes, whose 
words he adapts with very slight variations. Sonnet lxxiii. of 
Desportes's ; Amours d'Hippolyte ' opens thus : 

Sommeil, paisible fils de la Nuict solitaire . . . 

frere de la Mort que tu m'es ennemi ! 

Daniel's sonnets were enthusiastically received. With some 
additions they were republished in 1594 with his narrative poem, 
F r 4 The Complaint of Rosamund. 1 The volume was 

Daniel's called 'Delia and Rosamund Augmented.' Spenser, 
sonnets. j n jjj s t Colin Clout's come Home again,' lauded the 
' well-tuned song ' of Daniel's sonnets, and Shakespeare has some 
claim to be classed among Daniel's many sonnetteering disciples. 
The anonymous author of ' Zepheria ' (1594) declared that the 
1 sweet tuned accents ' of ' Delian sonnetry ' rang throughout 
England; while Bartholomew Griffin, in his 'Fidessa' (1596), 
openly plagiarised Daniel, invoking in his Sonnet xv. ' Care- 
charmer sleep, brother of quiet death.' 

In September of the same year (1592) that saw the first 

complete version of Daniel's ' Delia,' Henry Constable published 

~ . u , , ' Diana : the Praises of his Mistres in certaine sweete 
Constable s 

' Diana,' Sonnets.' Like the title, the general tone was drawn 
I 59 2 - from Desportes's ' Amours de Diane.' Twenty-one 

poems were included, all in the French vein. The collection 
was reissued, with very numerous additions, in 1594 under the 
title 'Diana; or, The excellent conceitful Sonnets of H. C. 
Augmented with divers Ouatorzains of honourable and learned 
personages.' This volume is a typical venture of the book- 
sellers. 1 The printer, James Roberts, and the publisher, Richard 
Smith, supplied dedications respectively to the reader and to 
Queen Elizabeth's ladies-in-waiting. They had swept together 

1 It is reprinted in Arber's Garner, ii. 225-64. 



432 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

sonnets in manuscript from all quarters, and presented their cus- 
tomers with a disordered miscellany of what they called c orphan 
poems.' Besides the twenty sonnets by Constable, eight were 
claimed for Sir Philip Sidney, and the remaining forty-seven 
are by various hands which have not as yet been identified. 

In 1593 the legion of sonnetteers received notable reinforce- 
ments. In May came out Barnabe Barnes's interesting volume, 
Barnes's l Parthenophil and Parthenope : Sonnets, Madrigals, 
sonnets, Elegies, and Odes. To the right noble and virtuous 
I 593- gentleman, M. William Percy, Esq., his dearest 

friend.' 1 The contents of the volume and their arrangement 
closely resemble the sonnet-collections of Petrarch or the 
1 Amours' of Ronsard. There are a hundred and five sonnets 
altogether, interspersed with twenty-six madrigals, five sestines, 
twenty-one elegies, three 'canzons,' and twenty 'odes,' one in 
sonnet form. There is, moreover, included what purports to be 
a translation of < Moschus' first eidillion describing love,' but 
what is clearly a rendering of a French poem by Amadis 
Jamin, entitled ' Amour Fuitif, du grec de Moschus,' in his 
' (Euvres Poetiques,' Paris, 1579. 2 At the end of Barnes's 
volume there also figure six dedicatory sonnets. In Sonnet xcv. 
Barnes pays a compliment to Sir Philip Sidney, ' the Arcadian 
shepherd, Astrophel,' but he did not draw so largely on Sidney's 
work as on that of Ronsard, Desportes, De Baif, and Du Bellay. 
Legal metaphors abound in Barnes's poems, but amid many 
crudities he reaches a high level of beauty in Sonnet lxvi., which 
runs : 

Ah, sweet Content! where is thy mild abode ? 
Is it with shepherds, and light-hearted swains, 
Which sing upon the downs, and pipe abroad, 
Tending their flocks and cattle on the plains ? 

Ah, sweet Content ! where dost thou safely rest ? 
In Heaven, with Angels ? which the praises sing 
Of Him that made, and rules at His behest, 
The minds and hearts of every living thing. 



iArber's Garner, v. 333-486. 

2 Ben Jonson developed the same conceit in his masque, The Hue and Cry after 
Cupid, 1608. 



VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 433 

Ah, sweet Content ! where doth thine harbour hold? 
Is it in churches, with religious men, 
Which please the gods with prayers manifold ; 
And in their studies meditate it then? 

Whether thou dost in Heaven or earth appear ; 

Be where thou wilt ! Thou wilt not harbour here ! 1 

In August 1593 there appeared a posthumous collection of 
sixty-one sonnets by Thomas Watson, entitled l The Tears 
of Fancie, or Love Disdained. 1 They are throughout 
' Tearsof °f tne imitative type of his previously published * Cen- 
Fancie," turie of Love.' Many of them sound the same note 
I 593- as Shakespeare's sonnets to the ' dark lady.' 

In September 1593 followed Giles Fletcher's i Licia, or 
Poems of Love in honour of the admirable and singular virtues 
Fl t her's °^ ^ s ^ a ^y*' T ^ s collection of fifty-three sonnets 
' Licia,' is dedicated to the wife of Sir Richard Mollineux. 
I 593- Fletcher makes no concealment that his sonnets are 

literary exercises. ' For this kind of poetry,' he tells the reader, 
; I did it to try my humour ; ' and on the title-page he notes that 
the work was written ' to the imitation of the best Latin poets 
and others.' 2 

The most notable contribution to the sonnet-literature 
of 1593 was Thomas Lodge's * Phillis Honoured with Pastoral 
, , , Sonnets, Elegies, and Amorous Delights.' 3 Besides 

' Phillis,' forty sonnets, some of which exceed fourteen lines 
x 593- in length and others are shorter, there are included 

three elegies and an ode. Desportes is Lodge's chief master, 
but he had recourse to Ronsard and other French contempo- 
raries. How servile he could be may be learnt from a com- 
parison of his Sonnet xxxvi. with Desportes's sonnet from * Les 
Amours de Diane,' livre 11. sonnet hi. 

Thomas Lodge's Sonnet xxxvi. runs thus : 

If so I seek the shades, I presently do see 
The god of love forsakes his bow and sit me by ; 
If that I think to write, his Muses pliant be 
If so I plain my grief, the wanton boy will cry. 

1 Dekker's well-known song, ' Oh, sweet content,' in his play of ' Patient 
Grisselde' (1599), echoes this sonnet of Barnes. 2 Arber's Garner, viii. 413-52 

3 There is a convenient reprint of Lodge's Phillis in Elizabethan Sonnet-Cycles 
\>, Martha Foote Crow, 1896. 

2F 



434 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

If I lament his pride, he doth increase my pain; 
If tears my cheeks attaint, his cheeks are moist with moan; 
If I disclose the wounds the which my heart hath slain, 
He takes his fascia off, and wipes them dry anon. 

If so I walk the woods, the woods are his delight, 
If I myself torment, he bathes him in my blood ; 
He will my soldier be if once I wend to fight, 
If seas delight, he steers my bark amidst the hood. 

In brief, the cruel god doth never from me go, 

But makes my lasting love eternal with my woe. 

Desportes wrote in 'Les Amours de Diane, 1 book n. son- 
net iii. : 

Si ie me sies a l'ombre, aussi soudainement 
Amour, laissant son arc, s'assiet et se repose : 
Si ie pense a des vers, ie le voy qu'il compose : 
Si ie plains mes douleurs, il se plaint hautement. 

Si ie me plais au mal, il accroist mon tourment : 
Si ie respan des pleurs, son visage il arrose : 
Si ie monstre la playe en ma poitrine enclose, 
II defait son bandeau l'essuyant doucement. 

Si ie vay par les bois, aux bois il m'accompagne : 
Si ie me suis cruel, dans mon sang il se bagne : 
Si ie vais a la guerre, il deuient mon soldart: 

Si ie passe la mer, il conduit ma vacelle : 

Bref, iamais l'inhumain de moy ne se depart, 
Pour rendre mon amour et ma peine eternelle. 

Three new volumes in 1594, together with the reissue of 
Daniel's 'Delia' and of Constable's"* Diana 1 (in a piratical mis- 
cellany of sonnets from many pens), prove the steady growth 
of the sonnetteering vogue. Michael Drayton in June pro- 
duced his • Ideas Mirrour, Amours in Quatorzains, 1 containing 
Dravton's fifty-one ' Amours 1 and a sonnet addressed to ' his 
•Idea," 1594. ever kind Mecaenas, Anthony Cooke. 1 Drayton 
acknowledged his devotion to 'divine Sir Philip, 1 but by his 
choice of title, style, and phraseology the English sonnetteer 
once more betrayed his indebtedness to Desportes and his 
compeers. 'L'ldee' was the name of a collection of sonnets 
by Claude de Pontoux in 1579. Many additions were made 
by Drayton to the sonnets that he published in 1594, and 
many were subtracted before 161 9, when there appeared 
the last edition that was prepared in Drayton's lifetime. A 
comparison of the various editions (1594, 1599? 1605, and 16 19) 



VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 435 

shows that Drayton published a hundred sonnets, but the major- 
ity were apparently circulated by him in early life. 1 

William Percy, the ' dearest friend 1 of Barnabe Barnes, pub- 
lished in 1594, in emulation of Barnes, a collection of twenty 
p , ' Sonnets to the fairest Ccelia. 1 2 He explains, in an 

'Coelia,' address to the reader, that out of courtesy he had 
x 594- lent the sonnets to friends, who had secretly com- 

mitted them to the press. Making a virtue of necessity, he had 
accepted the situation, but begged the reader to treat them as 
'toys and amorous devices. 1 

A collection of forty sonnets or ' canzons, 1 as the anonymous 
author calls them, also .appeared in 1594 with the title 'Zeph- 
' Zepheria,' eria. 1 3 In some prefatory verses addressed 'Alii 

1 594- veri figlioli delle Muse. 1 laudatory reference was made 
to the sonnets of Petrarch, Daniel, and Sidney. Several of the 
sonnets labour at conceits drawn from the technicalities of the 
law, and Sir John Davies parodied these efforts in the eighth 
of his 'gulling sonnets' beginning, 'My case is this, I love Zeph- 
eria bright. 1 

Four interesting ventures belong to 1595- In January 
appended to Richard Barnfield's poem of ' Cynthia 1 a pane- 
gyric on Queen Elizabeth, was a series of twenty sonnets 
extolling the personal charms of a young man, in emulation of 
Virgil's Eclogue ii., in which the shepherd Coridon addressed 
Barnfield's the shepherd-boy Alexis. 4 In Sonnet xx. the author 
GanTnede ex P ressed regret that the task of celebrating his 
*595- ' y° un g friend's praises had not fallen to the more 

capable hand of Spenser ('great Colin, chief of shepherds all') 
or Drayton ('gentle Rowland, my professed friend 1 ). Barnfield 
at times imitated Shakespeare. 

Almost at the same date as Barnfield's ' Cynthia 1 made its 
appearance, there was published the more notable collection by 
Spenser's Edmund Spenser of eighty-eight sonnets, which in 
'Amoretti,' reference to their Italian origin he entitled 'Amo- 

1 595- retti. 1 5 Spenser had already translated many son- 

1 See p. no, note. 2 Arber's Garner, vi. 135-49. 

3 Id. v. 61-86. 

4 Reprinted in Arber's English Scholars' Library, 1882. 
s It was licensed for the press on November 19, 1594. 



436 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

nets on philosophic topics of Petrarch and Joachim Du Bellay. 
Some of the i Amoretti 1 were doubtless addressed by Spenser in 
1 593 to the lady who became his wife a year later. But the 
sentiment was largely ideal, and, as he says in Sonnet lxxxvii., 
he wrote, like Drayton, with his eyes fixed on ' Idaea. 1 

An unidentified <E. C, Esq., 1 produced also in 1595, under 
the title of ' Emaricdulfe, 1 x a collection of forty sonnets, echoing 
' Emaric- English and French models. In the dedication to his 
dulfe,' 1595. i two very good friends, John Zouch and Edward 
Fitton Esquiers, 1 the author tells them that an ague confined 
him to his chamber, ' and to abandon idleness he completed an 
idle work that he had already begun at the command and service 
of a fair dame.'' 

To 1595 may best be referred the series of nine < Gullinge 
sonnets,' or parodies, which Sir John Davies wrote and circu- 
Sir John lated in manuscript, in order to put to shame what 
Davies's he regarded as 'the bastard sonnets 1 in vogue. He 
Sonnets*' addressed his collection to Sir Anthony Cooke, 
1595- whom Drayton had already celebrated as the 

Mecaenas of his sonnetteering efforts. 2 Davies seems to have 
aimed at Shakespeare as well as at insignificant rhymers like 
the author of 'Zepheria. 13 No. viii. of Davies^ 'gullinge 
sonnets, 1 which ridicules the legal metaphors of the sonnet- 
teers, may be easily matched in the collections of Barnabe 
Barnes or of the author of ' Zepheria, 1 but Davies's phraseology 
suggests that he also was glancing at Shakespeare's legal son- 
nets lxxxvii. and cxxxiv. Davies's sonnet runs : 

My case is this, I love Zepheria bright, 
Of her I hold my heart by fealty : 
Which I discharge to her perpetually, 
Yet she thereof will never me acquit[e]. 
For, now supposing I withhold her right, 
She hath distrained my heart to satisfy 
The duty which I never did deny, 
And far away impounds it with despite. 



1 Reprinted for the Roxburghe Club in A Lamport Garland, 1881, edited by 
Mr. Charles Edmonds. 

2 Sir John Davies's Complete Poems, edited by Dr. Grosart, ii. 51-62. 

3 See p. 128, note. 



VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 437 

I labour therefore justly to repleave [i.e. recover] 

My heart which she unjustly doth impound. 

But quick conceit which now is Love's high shrieve 

Returns it as esloyned [i.e. absconded], not to be found. 

Then what the law affords I only crave, 

Her heart for mine, in wit her name to have (sic). 

i R. L., gentleman, 1 probably Richard Linche, published in 
1596 thirty-nine sonnets under the title ' Diella. 1 1 The effort is 
Li , .. thoroughly conventional. In an obsequious address 
'Diella,' by the publisher, Henry Olney, to Anne, wife of Sir 
I 59 6 - Henry Glenham, Linche's sonnets are described as 

' passionate,' and as ' conceived in the brain of a gallant 
gentleman.'' 

To the same year belongs Bartholomew Griffin's ' Fidessa, 1 
sixty-two sonnets inscribed to 'William Essex, Esq. 1 Griffin 
Griffin's designates his sonnets as ' the first fruits of a young 
' Fidessa," beginner.' He is a shameless plagiarist. Daniel is 
I 59 6 - his chief model, but he also imitated Sidney, Watson, 

Constable, and Drayton. Sonnet iii., beginning ' Venus and 
young Adonis sitting by her,' is almost identical with the fourth 
poem — -a sonnet beginning L Sweet Cytheraea, sitting by a brook 1 
— Tn Jaggard's piratical miscellany, 'The Passionate Pilgrim, 1 
which bore Shakespeare's name on the title-page. 2 Jaggard doubt- 
less stole the poem from Griffin, although it may be in its essen- 
T[ tials the property of some other poet. Three beautiful 

Campion, love-sonnets by Thomas Campion, which are found 
I 59 6 - in the Harleian MS. 6910, are there dated 1596. 3 

William Smith was the author of l Chloris, 1 a third collection 
of sonnets appearing in 1596. 4 The volume contains forty-eight 
William sonnets of love of the ordinary type, with three 
'Chi 1 ' adulating Spenser ; of these, two open the volume 
1596. and one concludes it. Smith says that his sonnets 

were 'the budding springs of his study. 1 In 1600 a license 
was issued by the Stationers 1 Company for the issue of ' Amours ' 

1 Arbers Gamer, vii. 185-208. 

2 lb. v. 587-622. 

3 Cf. Brydges's Excerpta Tudoriana, 1814, i. 35-7. One was printed with some 
alterations in Rosseter's Book of Ayres (1610), and another in the Third Book of 
Ayres (1617?); see Campion's Works, ed. A. H. Bullen, pp. 15-16, 102. 

4 Arber's Garner, viii. 171-99. 



438 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

by W. S. This no doubt refers to a second collection of sonnets 

by William Smith. The projected volume is not extant. 1 

In 1597 there came out a similar volume by Robert Tofte, 

entitled ' Laura, the Joys of a Traveller, or the Feast of Fancy. 1 

The book is divided into three parts, each consisting of forty 

i sonnets ' in irregular metres. There is a prose dedication to 

Lucy, sister of Henry, ninth Earl of Northumberland. Tofte 

^ , tells his patroness that most of his ' toys ' f were 

Robert . r . _ ; , V . ,. \ . 

Tofte's conceived in Italy. As its name implies, his work 

' Laura,' i s a p a j e reflection of Petrarch. A postscript by a 
friend — 'R. B. 1 — complains that a publisher had 
intermingled with Tofte's genuine efforts ' more than thirty son- 
nets not his. 1 But the style is throughout so uniformly tame that 
it is not possible to distinguish the work of a second hand. 

To the same era belongs Sir William Alexander's ' Aurora, 1 
a collection of a hundred and six sonnets, with a few songs 
g. . w -i]- and elegies interspersed on French patterns. Sir 
Alexander's William describes the work as * the first fancies of 
' Aurora.' \^ s y 0U th,' and formally inscribes it to Agnes, Coun- 
tess of Argyle. It was not published till 1604. 2 

Sir Fulke Greville, afterwards Lord Brooke, the intimate 
friend of Sir Philip Sidney, was author of a like collection of 
Sir Fulke sonnets called ' Caelica. 1 The poems number a 
Greville's hundred and nine, but few are in strict sonnet metre. 
'Caelica.' Only a small proportion profess to be addressed to 
the poefs fictitious mistress, Caelica, Many celebrate the 

1 See p. 390 and note. 

2 Practically to the same category as these collections of sonnets belong the 
voluminous laments of lovers, in six, eight, or ten lined stanzas, which, though not 
in strict sonnet form, closely resemble in temper the sonnet-sequences. Such are 
Willobie^s Avisa, 1594; A Icilia. : Philoparthen's Loving Folly, by J. C, 1595; Arbor 
0/ Amorous Deuices, 1597 (containing two regular sonnets) by Nicholas Breton; 
Alba, the Months Minde of a Melancholy Lover, by Robert Tofte, 1598; Dai- 
phantus, or the Passions of Love, by Anthony Scoloker, 1604; Breton's The Pas- 
sionate Shepheard, or The Shepheardes Loue: set downe in passions to his Shep- 
heardesse Aglaia: -with many excellent conceited poems and pleasant sonnets fit 
for young heads to passe away idle houres, 1604 (none of the ' Sonets ' are in sonnet 
metre; and John Reynolds's Dolarnys Primerose . . . wherein is expressed the 
liuely passions of Zeale and Loue, 1606. Though George Wither's similar pro- 
ductions — his exquisitely fanciful Fidelia (1617) and his Faire-Virtue, the Mistresse 
of Phil' Arete (1622) — were published at a later period, they were probably designed 
in the opening years of the seventeenth century. 



VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 439 

charms of another beauty named Myra, and others invoke 
Queen Elizabeth under her poetic name of Cynthia (cf. Sonnet 
xvii.). There are also many addresses to Cupid and medita- 
tions on more or less metaphysical themes, but the tone is never 
very serious. Greville doubtless wrote the majority of his 
i Sonnets ' during the period under survey, though they were not 
published until their authors works appeared in folio for the first 
time in 1633, five years after his death. 

With Tofte's volume in 1597 the publication of collections 
of love-sonnets practically ceased. Only two collections on 

t. \ , a voluminous scale seem to have been written in the 

Estimate of 

number of early years of the seventeenth century. About 1607 

love-son- William Drummond of Hawthornden penned a series 
nets issued _ ... . . , . . , 

between of sixty-eight interspersed with songs, madrigals, 

1591 and and sextains, nearly all of which were translated or 
J ^ 97 ' adapted from modern Italian sonnetteers. 1 About 

1610 John Davies of Hereford published his • Wittes Pilgrim- 
age . . . through a world of Amorous Sonnets. 1 Of more than 
two hundred separate poems in this volume, only the hundred 
and four sonnets in the opening section make any claim to 
answer the description on the title-page, and the majority of 
those are metaphysical meditations on lore which are not 
addressed to any definite person. Some years later William 
Browne penned a sequence of fourteen love-sonnets entitled 
' Caelia ' and a few detached sonnets of the same type. 2 The 
date of the production of Drummond's, Davies's, and Browne's 
sonnets excludes them from the present field of view. Omitting 
them, we find that between 1591 and 1597 there had been 
printed nearly twelve hundred sonnets of the amorous kind. 
If to these we add Shakespeare's poems, and make allow- 
ance for others which, only circulating in manuscript, have 
not reached us, it is seen that more than two hundred love- 
sonnets were produced in each of the six years under survey. 
France and Italy directed their literary energies in like direc- 
tion during nearly the whole of the century, but at no other 

1 They were first printed in 1656, seven years after the author's death, in Poe»is 
by that famous wit, William Drwnmond, London, fol. The volume was edited by 
Edward Phillips, Milton's nephew. The best modern edition is that edited by Mr. 
W. C. Ward in the ' Muses' Library ' (1894). 

2 Cf. William Browne's Poems in ' Muses' Library' (1894), ii. 217 seq. 



440 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

period and in no other country did the love-sonnet dominate 
literature to greater extent than in England between 1591 and 
1597- 

Of sonnets to patrons between 1591 and 1597, of which 
detached specimens may be found in nearly every published 
book of the period, the chief collections were : 

A long series of sonnets prefixed to ' Poetical Exercises of a 
Vacant Hour' by King James VI of Scotland, 1591 ; twenty- 
II Sonnets tnree sonnets in Gabriel Harvey's 'Four Letters and 
to patrons, certain Sonnets touching Robert Greene' (1592), 
I 59 I -7- including Edmund Spenser's fine sonnet of com- 

pliment addressed to Harvey; a series of sonnets to noble 
patronesses by Constable circulated in manuscript about 1592 
(first printed in ' Harleian Miscellany,' 1813, ix. 491); six 
adulatory sonnets appended by Barnabe Barnes to his 'Par- 
thenophil' in May 1593; four sonnets to 'Sir Philip Sidney's 
soul,' prefixed to the first edition of Sidney's 'Apologie for 
Poetrie ' (1595); seventeen sonnets which were originally pre- 
fixed to the first edition of Spenser's ' Faerie Queene,' bk. i.-iii., 
in 1590, and were reprinted in the edition of 1596; 1 sixty 
sonnets to peers, peeresses, and officers of state, appended to 
Henry Locke's (or Lok's) * Ecclesiasticus ' (1597) ; forty sonnets 
by Joshua Sylvester addressed to Henry IV of France 'upon 
the late miraculous peace in Fraunce ' (1599) ; Sir John Davies's 
series of twenty-six octosyllabic sonnets, which he entitled 
' Hymnes of Astraea,' all extravagantly eulogising Queen Eliza- 
beth (1599). 

The collected sonnets on religion and philosophy that ap- 
peared in the period 1591—7 include sixteen ' Spirituall Sonnettes 
III. Son- to the honour of God and Hys Saynts,' written by 
nets on Constable about 1593, and circulated only in manu- 

and°rd£ y script ; these were first printed from a manuscript in 
gion. the Harleian collection (5993) by Thomas Parke 

in 'Helicona,' 181 5, vol. ii. In 1595 Barnabe Barnes published 

1 Chapman imitated Spenser by appending fourteen like sonnets to his transla- 
tion of Homer in 1610; they were increased in later issues to twenty-two. Very 
numerous sonnets to patrons were appended by John Davies of Hereford to his 
Microcosmos (1603) and to his Scourge of Folly (1611). ' Divers sonnets, epistles, 
&c.' addressed to patrons by Joshua Sylvester between 1590 and his death in 1618 
were collected in the 1641 edition of his Du Bartas his divine weekes and workes. 



VOGUE OF THE ELIZABETHAN SONNET 44 r 

a 'Divine Centime of»Spirituall Sonnets, 1 and, in dedicating the 
collection to Toby Matthew, bishop of Durham, mentions that 
they were written a year before, while travelling in France. 
They are closely modelled on the two series of ' Sonnets 
Spirituels 1 which the Abbe Jacques de Billy published in Paris in 
1573 and 1578 respectively. A long series of ' Sonnets Spirituels 1 
written by Anne de Marquets, a sister of the Dominican Order, 
who died at Poissy in 1598, was first published in Paris in 1605. 
In 1594 George Chapman published ten sonnets in praise of 
philosophy, which he entitled ' A Coronet for his Mistress Philos- 
ophy. 1 In the opening poem he states that his aim was to dis- 
suade poets from singing in sonnets ' Love^ Sensual Empery. 1 
In 1597 Henry Locke (or Lok) appended to his verse-rendering 
of Ecclesiastes x a collection of * Sundrie Sonets of Christian 
Passions, with other Affectionate Sonets of a Feeling Conscience. 1 
Lok had in 1593 obtained a license to publish i a hundred Son- 
nets on Meditation, Humiliation, and Prayer, 1 but that work is 
not extant. In the volume of 1597 his sonnets on religious or 
philosophical themes number no fewer than three hundred and 
twenty-eight. 2 

Thus in the total of sonnets published between 1591 and 
1597 must be included at least five hundred sonnets addressed 
to patrons, and as many on philosophy and religion. The 
aggregate far exceeds two thousand. 

1 Remy Belleau in 1566 brought out a similar poetical version of the Book of 
Ecclesiastes entitled Vanite. 

2 There are forty-eight sonnets on the Trinity and similar topics appended to 
Davies's Wittes Pilgrimage (1610 ?). 



442 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ON THE SONNET IN 
FRANCE, 1 550-1 600 

In the earlier years of the sixteenth century Melin de Saint- 
Gelais (1487-1558) and Clement Marot (1496-1544) made a few 
scattered efforts at sonnetteering in France ; and Maurice Seve 
laid down the lines of all sonnet-sequences on themes of love 

in his dixains entitled 'Delie' (1544). But it was 
(1524-85) Ronsard (1524-85), in the second half of the cen- 
and ' La tury, who first gave the sonnet a pronounced vogue in 

France. The sonnet was handled with the utmost 
assiduity not only by Ronsard, but by all the literary comrades 
whom he gathered round him, and on whom he bestowed the 
title of ' La Pleiade. 1 The leading aim that united Ronsard 
and his friends was the re-formation of the French language 
and literature on classical models. But they assimilated and 
naturalised in France not only much that was admirable in 
Latin and Greek poetry, l but all that was best in the recent 
Italian literature. 2 Although they were learned poets, Ronsard 

1 Graphic illustrations of the attitude of Ronsard and his friends to a Greek poet like 
Anacreon appear in A nacreon etles Poemes anacreontiqties Texte grec avec les Tra- 
ductions et Imitations des Poetes du XVI e siecle, par A. Delboulle (Havre, 1891). 
A translation of Anacreon by Remy Belleau appeared in 1556. Cf. Ste.-Beuve's 
essay, ' Anacreon au XVI e siecle,' in his Tableau de la Poesie franqaise au XVI 6 
siecle (1893), pp. 432-47. In the same connection Recueil des plus beaux Epi- 
grammes grecs, mis en versfranqois, par Pierre Tamisier (edit. 1617), is of interest. 

2 Italy was the original home of the sonnet, and it was as popular a poetic form 
with Italian writers of the sixteenth century as with those of the three preceding 
centuries. The Italian poets whose sonnets, after those of Petrarch, were best known 
in England and France in the later years of the sixteenth century were Serafino 
dell' Aquila (1466-1500), Jacopo Sannazzaro (1458-1530^, Agnolo Firenzuola (1497- 
i547\ Cardinal Bembo (1470-1547), Gaspara Stampa (1524-53), Pietro Aretino 



THE SONNET IN FRANCE 443 

and the majority of his associates had a natural lyric vein, 
which gave their poetry the charms of freshness and spontaneity. 
The true members of ' La Pleiade,'' according to Ronsard's 
own statement, were, besides himself, Joachim du Bellay (1524- 
60); Estienne Jodelle (1532-73); Remy Belleau (1528-77); 
Jean Daurat-Dinemandy, usually known as Daurat or Dorat 
(1508-88), Ronsard's classical teacher in early life; Jean- 
Antoine de Baif (1532-89); and Ponthus de Thyard (1521- 
1605). Other of Ronsard's literary allies are often loosely 
reckoned among the 'Pleiade. 1 These writers include Jean de 
la Peruse (1529-54), Olivier de Magny (1530-59), Amadis 
Jamyn (1538?— 85), Jean Passerat (1534-1602), Philippe Des- 
portes (1546-1606), Estienne Pasquier (1529-1615), Scevole de 
Sainte-Marthe ( 1 536-1 623), and Jean Bertaut ( 1 552-1 611). These 
D subordinate members of the ' Pleiade ' were no less 

(1546- devoted than the original members to sonnetteering. 

1606). of those in this second rank, Desportes was most 

popular in France as well as in England. Although many of 
Desportes's sonnets are graceful in thought and melodious in 
rhythm, most of them abound in overstrained conceits. Not 
only was Desportes a more slavish imitator of Petrarch than the 
members of the < Pleiade,' but he encouraged numerous disciples 
to practice l Petrarchism,' as the imitation of Petrarch was 
called, beyond healthful limits. Under the influence of Des- 
portes the French sonnet became, during the latest years of 
the sixteenth century, little more than an empty and fantastic 
echo of the Italian. 

The following statistics will enable the reader to realise how 
closely the sonnetteering movement in France adumbrated that 



(1492-1557), Bernardo Tasso (1493-1568), Luigi Tansillo (1510-68), Gabriello 
Fiamma (d. 1585), Torquato Tasso (1544-95), Luigi Groto {fl. 1570), Giovanni 
Battista Guarini (1537-1612), and Giovanni Battista Marino (1565-1625) (cf. Tira- 
boschi's Storia della Letteratura Italiana, 1770-82; Dr. Garnett's History of 
Italian Literature, 1897; and Symonds's Renaissance in Italy, edit. 1898, 
vols. iv. and vi.). The notes to Watson's Passionate Centnrie of Love, published 
in 1582 (see p. 103, note 1, supra) ; to Davison's Poetical Rhapsody, edited by Mr. 
A. H. Bullen in 1891, and to the Poems of Drummo7id of Hawthornden, edited by 
Mr. W. C. Ward in 1894, give many illustrations of English sonnetteers' indebted- 
ness to Serafino, Groto, Marino, Guarini, Tasso, and other Italian sonnetteers of the 
sixteenth century. 



444 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 

in England. The collective edition in 1584 of the works of Ron- 
sard, the master of the ' Pleiade, 1 contains more than nine hundred 
Chief col- separate sonnets arranged under such titles as ' Amours 
lections of de Cassandre,' 'Amours de Marie,' ' Amours pour 
Frenchson- Astree,' f Amours pour Helene ' ; besides ' Amours 
lished be- Divers ' and ' Sonnets Divers, 1 complimentary ad- 
tween 1550 dresses to friends and patrons. Du Bellay's ' Olive, 1 
5 4 ' a collection of love sonnets, first published in 1549, 
reached a total of a hundred and fifty. ' Les Regrets,' Du Bellay's 
sonnets on general topics, some of which Edmund Spenser first 
translated into English, numbered in the edition of 1565 a 
hundred and eighty-three. De Baif published two long series 
of sonnets, entitled respectively 'Les Amours de Meline' (1552) 
and 'Les Amours de Francine ' (1555). Amadis Jamyn was 
responsible for ' Les Amours d"Oriane,' ' Les Amours de 
Calliree,' and * Les Amours d 1 Artemis ' (1575)- Desportes's 
'Premieres CEuvres ' (1575). a very popular book in England, 
included more than three hundred sonnets — a hundred and fifty 
being addressed to Diane, eighty-six to Hippolyte, and ninety- 
one to Cleonice. Belleau brought out a volume of ' Amours ' 
in 1576; and Ponthus de Thyard produced in 1587 his 'Erreurs 
Amoureuses,' sonnets addressed to Pasithee. 

Among other collections of sonnets published by less known 
writers of the period, and arranged here according to date of 
Minor col- first publication, were those of Guillaume des Autels, 
lections of , Amoureux Repos ' (1553); Olivier de Magny, 
sonnets 'Amours, Soupirs, 1 &c. (1553, 1559); Louise Labe, 

published < CEuvres " (1555); Jacques Tahureau, *Odes, Son- 
^53 and nets ^ &c ' ( r 554> T 574) ; Claude de Billet, • Amalthee,' 
1605. a hundred and twenty-eight love sonnets (1561); 

Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, ' Foresteries ' (1555 et annis seq.) ; 
Jacques Grevin, 'Olympe' (1561) ; Nicolas Ellain, 'Sonnets' 
(1561) ; Scdvole de Sainte-Marthe, 'CEuvres Francaises ' (1569, 
1579); Estienne de la Boetie, 'CEuvres' (1572), and twenty- 
nine sonnets published with Montaigne's ' Essais ' (1580); Jean 
et Jacques de la Taille, 'CEuvres 1 (1573); Jacques de Billy, 
'Sonnets Spirituels 1 (first series 1573, second series 1578); 
Estienne Jodelle, ' CEuvres Poetiques 1 (1574); Claude de Pon- 



THE SONNET IN FRANCE 445 

toux, ; Sonnets de L'Ide'e ' (1579); Les Dames des Roches, 
•(Em-res' (1579, 1584); Pierre de Brach, 'Amours d'Aymee ' 
{circa 1580); Gilles Durant, ; Poesies' — sonnets to Charlotte 
and Camille (1587, 1594) ; Jean Passerat, ' Vers . . . d' Amours ' 
(1597); and Anne de Marquet, who died in 1588, 'Sonnets 
Spirituels ' (1605). 1 

1 There are modern reprints of most of these books, but not of all. There is a 
good reprint of Ronsard's works, edited by M. P. Blanchemain, in La Bibliotheque 
Elzevirieii7ie, 8 vols. 1867; the Etude sur la Vie de Ronsard, in the eighth vol- 
ume, is useful. The works of Remy Belleau are issued in the same series. The 
writings of the seven original members of ' La Pleiade ' are reprinted in La Pleiade 
Franqaise, edited by Marty-Laveaux, 16 vols., 1866-93. Maurice Seve's Delie was 
reissued at Lyon in 1862. Pierre de Brach's poems were carefully edited by Rein- 
hold Dezeimeris (2 vols. Paris, 1862). A complete edition of Desportes's works, 
edited by Alfred Michiels, appeared in 1863. Prosper Blanchemain edited a reissue 
of the works of Louise Labe in 1875. The works of Jean de la Taille, of Amadis 
Jamyn, and of Guillaume des Autels are reprinted in Tresor des Vieux Poetes 
Franqais (1877 et annis seq.). See Ste.-Beuve's Tableau Historique et Critique 
de la Poesie Franqais du XVI e Siecle (Paris, 1893) ; Henry Francis Cary's Early 
French Poets (London, 1846) ; Becq de Fouquieres's CEuvres choisies des Poetes 
Franqais du XVI e Siecle contemporains avec Ronsard (1880), and the same 
editor's selections from De Baif, Du Bellay, and Ronsard; Darmesteter et Hatzfeld's 
Le Seizieme Siecle en France — Tableau de la Litterature et de la Langue (6th 
edit., 1897) ; and Petit de Julleville's Histoire de la Langue et de la Litterature 
Franqaise (1897, iii. 136-260). 



INDEX 



ABBEY 

Abbey, Mr. E. A., 342 
Abbott, Dr. E. A., 364 

Actor, Shakespeare as an, 43-45. 
See also Roles, Shakespeare's 

Actors : at Stratford-on-Avon, 10, 33 ; 
the players' licensing Act of Queen 
Elizabeth, 34 ; boy-actors, 34, 35, 
38, 213 ; companies of adult actors, 
in 1587, 35; patronage of, 35, 36; 
230 seq.; women's parts played 
by men or boys, 38 and n 2, 334, 
335 ; tours in the provinces, 39-42 ; 
foreign tours, 42; Shakespeare's 
alleged scorn of their calling, 44, 
45 ; ' advice ' to, in Hamlet, 45 ; 
their incomes, 198, 199 and n 2, 
201 ; strife between adult and boy 
actors, 213-17, 221 ; the first sub- 
stitution of women for boys in 
female parts, 334, 335 

Adam, in As You Like It, played 
by Shakespeare, 44 

Adaptations of plays by Shakespeare, 
56 

Adaptations of Shakespeare's plays 
at the Restoration, 331, 332 

Adulation, extravagance of, in the 
days of Queen Elizabeth, 137, 138, 
and n 2 

^Eschylus, Hamlet's ' sea of troubles ' 
paralleled in the Persas of, 13 n ; 
resemblance between Lady Mac- 
beth and Clytemnestra in the Aga- 
memnon of, 13 n 

^Esthetic school of Shakespearean 
criticism, 333 

Alexander, Sir William, sonnets by, 
438 



Alleyn, Edward, manages for a time 
the amalgamated companies of the 
Admiral and Lord Strange, 37 ; 
pays fivepence for the pirated Son- 
nets, 90 n ; his large savings, 204, 
362 

Allot, Robert, 312 

All's Well that Ends Well ; sonnet, 
84; probable date of produc- 
tion, 162; source of plot, 163; 
probably identical with Loves 
Labour's Won, 162; characters of, 
163. For editions see Section xix. 
(Bibliography), 301-25 

America, enthusiasm for Shake- 
speare in, 341, 342; copies of the 
First Folio in, 308, 310 n 

Amner, Rev. Richard, 321 

' Amoretti,' Spenser's, 115, 435 and 

n 5. 436 

' Amours ' by ' J. D.,' 390 and n 

Amphitruo of Plautus, probably sug- 
gested a scene in The Comedy of 
Errors, 54 

'Amyntas,' complimentary title of, 
385^2 

Angelo, Michael, 'dedicatory' son- 
nets of, 138 n 2 

' Annals of Great Brittaine,' 184 n 

'Anthia and Abrocomas,' by Xeno- 
phon Ephesius, the supposed orig- 
inal of the story of Romeo and 
Juliet, 55 11 1 

Antony and Cleopatra : 38 n 2, 143 
n 2 ; the longest of the poet's plays, 
224 ; date of entry in the ' Stationers' 
Registers,' 244; date of publica- 
tion, 245 ; the story derived from 



447 



44 8 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



APOLLONIUS 

Plutarch, 245 ; dramatic power of 
Acts IV. and v., 245; the style, 
245. For editions see Section xix. 
(Bibliography), 301-25 

Apollonius and Silla, Historie of, 
210 

' Apologie for Poetrie,' Sidney's, 
allusion to the conceit of the im- 
mortalising power of verse, 114; 
allusion to the adulation of patrons, 
138, 440. 

'Apology for Actors,' Heywood's, 
182 

Apsley, William, one of the book- 
sellers who distributed the pirated 
Sonnets, 90, 304, 312 

'Arcadia,' Sidney's, 88 n, 241 and 
71 2, 429 

Arden family, position in Warwick- 
shire of, 6, 191 

Arden family of Alvanley, 192 

Arden, Alice, 7 

Arden, Edward, executed for com- 
plicity in a Popish plot, 6 

Arden, Joan, 12 

Arden, Mary. See Shakespeare, 
Mary 

Arden, Robert (1), sheriff of War- 
wickshire and Leicestershire in 
1438, 6 

Arden, Robert (2), landlord at Snit- 
terfield of Richard Shakespeare, 
who was probably the poet's grand- 
father, 3, 6; marriage of his daugh- 
ter Mary to John Shakespeare, 6, 
7 ; his family and second marriage, 
6 ; his property and his will, 7 

Arden, Thomas, grandfather of 
Shakespeare's mother, 6 

Arden of Fever sham, sometimes as- 
signed to Shakespeare, 71 

Ariel, character of, 257 

Ariodante and Ginevra, Historie of, 
208 

Ariosto, Gli Suppositi of, 164; Or- 
lando Furioso of, tells story of 
Much Ado about Nothing, 208 

Aristotle, quotation from, made by 
both Shakespeare and Bacon, 
37° n 

Armado, in Love's Labour's Lost, 
51 n, 62 

Armenian language, translation of 
Shakespeare in the, 354 



AVISA 

Arms, coat of, Shakespeare's, 189, 
190, 191, 193 

Arms, College of, applications of 
the poet's father for a grant of 
arms to, 2, 10 n, 188-92 

Arne, Dr., 334 

Arnold, Matthew, 327 n 1 

Art in England, its indebtedness to 
Shakespeare, 340, 341 

As You Like Lt : allusion to the part 
of Rosalind being played by a boy, 
38 n 2; ridicule of foreign travel, 
42 n 2; acknowledgments to Mar- 
lowe (III. v. 8), 64; Marlowe's 
' Hero and Leander ' quoted, 64 ; 
adapted from Lodge's ' Rosalynde,' 
209 ; addition of new characters, 
209; its pastoral character, 209; 
said to have been performed be- 
fore King James at Wilton, 232 
n 1, 411 n. For editions see Sec- 
tion xix. (Bibliography), 301-25 

Asbies, the chief property of Robert 
Arden at Wilmcote, 7; mortgaged 
to Edmund Lambert, 12, 26; 
Shakespeare's endeavour to re- 
cover, 195 

Ashbee, Mr. E. W., 302 n 

Aston Cantlowe, 6 ; place of the mar- 
riage of Shakespeare's parents, 7 

' Astrophel,' apostrophe to Sidney in 
Spenser's, 143 n 2 

'Astrophel and Stella,' 83; the metre 
of, 95 ;/ 2; address to Cupid, 97 n\ 
the praise of ' blackness ' in Sonnet 
vii. of, 119 and n 1, 153 n 1; sub- 
ject and editions of, 428, 429 

Aubrey, John, the poet's first biog- 
rapher, on John Shakespeare's 
trade, 4, 18; on the poet's know- 
ledge of Latin, 16; lines quoted 
by, on John Combe, 269 n; on 
Shakespeare's genial disposition, 
278 ; value of his biography of the 
poet, 362, 414 

'Aurora,' title of Sir W. Alexander's 
collection of sonnets, 438 

Autobiographical features of Shake- 
speare's plays, 164-7, 168 

Autobiographical features of Shake- 
speare's sonnets, the question of, 
ioo, 109, 125, 152, 160 

Autographs of the poet, 284-6 

' Avisa,' Willobie's story of, 155 



INDEX 



449 



Ayrer, Jacob, similarity of the story 
of The Tempest to the story in Die 
schone Sidea by, 253 and n 1 

Ayscough, Samuel, 364 n 

Bacon, Miss Delia, 371 

Bacon Society, 372 

Bacon-Shakespeare controversy (Ap- 
pendix II.), 370-3 

Baddesley Clinton, the Shakespeares 
of, 3 

Baif, De, plagiarised indirectly by 
Shakespeare, 11 1 and n ; indebted- 
ness of Daniel and others to, 431, 
432 ; one of ' La Pleiade,' 443, 444 

Bandello, the story of Romeo and 
Juliet in, 55 n 1 ; the story of Hero 
and Claudio in, 208 ; the story of 
Twelfth Night in, 210 

Barante on Shakespeare, 350 

Barnard, Sir John, second husband 
of the poet's granddaughter Eliza- 
beth, 282 

Barnes, Barnabe, legal terminology 
in his Sonnets, 32 n 2, 109, 112; 
and (Appendix IX. ) 432; his 
sonnets of vituperation, 121 ; the 
probable rival of Shakespeare for 
Southampton's favour, 131, 132, 
I 33- z 35 n \ his sonnets, 132, 133, 
432 ; expressions in his sonnet 
(xlix.) adopted by Shakespeare, 
152 n; sonnet to Lady Bridget 
Manners, 379 n ; sonnet to South- 
ampton, 384; Sonnet lxvi. ('Ah, 
sweet Content') quoted, 432; his 
six sonnets to patrons, 440; his 
religious sonnets, 441 

Barnfield, Richard, feigning old age 
in his 'Affectionate Shepherd,' 
86 n ; his adulation of Queen Eliz- 
abeth in 'Cynthia,' 137 n, 435; 
sonnets addressed to ' Ganymede,' 
138 n 2, 435 ; predicts immortality 
for Shakespeare, 179 ; chief author 
of the ' Passionate Pilgrim,' 182 | 
and n, 397 

Bartholomew Fair, 256 

Bartlett, Mr. John, 364 

Barton collection of Shakespeareana 
at Boston, Mass., 341 

Barton-on-the-Heath, 12 ; identical 
with the ' Burton " in the Taming 
of The Shrew, 164 



BIDFORD 

Bathurst, Charles, an authority on 

Shakespeare's versification, 49 n 
Baynes, Thomas Spencer, 365 
Beale, Francis, 389 
'Bear Garden in Southwark, The,' 
one of the poet's lodgings said to 
have been near, 38 

Bearley, 6 

Beaumont, Francis, on the Mermaid 
tavern, 177 

Beaumont, Sir John, 388 

Bedford, Edward Russell, third Earl 
of, his marriage to Lucy Haring- 
ton perhaps celebrated in Mid- 
summer Night's Dream, 161 

Beeston, William (a seventeenth- 
century actor) , on Shakespeare as 
a schoolmaster, 29 ; on the poet's 
acting, 43, 361 

Bellay, Joachim du, Spenser's trans- 
lations of his sonnets, 101, 105 n, 
432, 43 6 - 443- 444 

Belieau, Remy, 441 ?i 1, 443, 444, 
445 « 

Belleforest, Shakespeare's indebted- 
ness to the ' Histoires Tragiques ' 
of, 14, 208, 222 ; translates the story 
of Romeo and Juliet, 55 n 1 

Benda, J. W. O., German translation 
of Shakespeare by, 344 

Benedick and his ' halting sonnet,' 
108, 208 

Benedix, J. R., opposition to Shake- 
spearean worship by, 345 

Bensley, Robert, actor, 338 

Bentley, R., 313 

Berlioz, Hector, 351 

Bermudas, the, wreck of Sir George 
Somers's fleet on, the groundwork 
of The Tempest, 252 

Berners, Lord, translation of ' Huon 
of Bordeaux' by, 162 

Bernhardt, Madame Sarah, 351 

Bertaut, Jean, 443 

Bettertori, Mrs., 335 

Betterton, Thomas, 33, 332, 334, 335, 
362 

Bianca and her lovers, story of, 
partly drawn from the ' Supposes ' 
of George Gascoigne, 164 

Bible, the, Shakespeare's acquaint- 
ance with, 16, 17 and n 1 

Bibliography of Shakespeare, 299-325 

Bidford, near Stratford, local legend 



450 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



BIOGRAPHY 

respecting a drinking bout at, 
271 

Biography of the poet, sources of 
(Appendix I.), 361-5 

Birmingham, memorial, Shakespeare 
library at, 298 

Biron, in Love's Labours Lost, 51 
and n 

Birth of Merlin, 181 

Birthplace, Shakespeare's, the ques- 
tion of, 8, 9 

' Bisson,' use of the word, 317 

Blackfriars, Shakespeare's purchase 
of property in, 267 

Blackfriars Theatre, built by James 
Burbage (1596), 38, 200; leased 
to 'the Queen's Children of the 
Chapel,' 38, 202, 213; not occu- 
pied by Shakespeare's company 
until 1609, 38 ; litigation of Bur- 
bage's heirs, 200; Shakespeare's 
interest in, 201, 202 ; Shakespeare's 
disposal of his shares in, 264 

' Blackness,' Shakespeare's praise of, 
118-20; cf. 155. See also Fitton, 
Mary 

Blades, William, 364 

Blind Beggar of Alexandria, Chap- 
man's, 51 71 

Blount, Edward, publisher, 92, 135 n, 
183, 244, 304, 305, 312, 393, 394 
and n 

Blurt, Master Constable, 51 n 

Boaden, James, 406 n 

Boar's Head Tavern, 170 

Boas, Mr. F. S., 365 

Boccaccio, Shakespeare's indebted- 
ness to, 163, 249, 251 and 71 2 

Bodenstedt, Friedrich von, German 
translation of Shakespeare by, 344 

Bohemia, allotted a seashore in 
Wi7iter's Tale, 251 

Bohemia, translations of Shake- 
speare in, 354 

Boiardo, 243 

Bond against impediments respect- 
ing Shakespeare's marriage, 20, 
21 

Bonian, Richard, printer, 226 

Booth, Barton, actor, 335 

Booth, Edwin, 342 

Booth, Junius Brutus, 342 

Booth, Lionel, 311 

Borck, Baron C. W. von, translation 



of Julius CcBsar into German by, 

343 

Boswell, James, 334 

Boswell, James (the younger), 322, 
405 n 

Boswell-Stone, Mr. W. G., 364 

Bottger, A., German translation of 
Shakespeare by, 344 

Boy-actors, 34, 35, 38 ; the strife be- 
tween adult actors and, 213-7 

Boy dell, John, his scheme for illus- 
trating the work of the poet, 341 

Bracebridge, C. H., 364 

Brach, Pierre de, his sonnet on Sleep 
echoed in Daniel's Sonnet xlix., 
101 and n 1, 431, 445 n 

Brandes, Mr. Georg, 365 

Brathwaite, Richard, 388, 398 

Breton, Nicholas, homage paid to 
the Countess of Pembroke in two 
of his poems, 138 n 2, 417 

Brewster, E., 313 

Bridgeman, Mr. C. O., 415 n 

Bright, James Heywood, 406 n 

Broke7i Heart, Ford's, similarity of 
theme of Shakespeare's Sonnet 
exxvi. with that of a song in, 97 n 

Brooke or Broke, Arthur, his trans- 
lation from Bandello of the story 
of Romeo and Juliet, 55; Romeus 
and Juliet of, 322 

Brooke, Ralph, complains about 
Shakespeare's coat-of-arms, 192, 

193 

Brown, C. Armitage, 406 71 

Brown, John, obtains a writ of dis- 
traint against Shakespeare's father, 
12 

Browne, William, love-sonnets by, 
439 and n 2 

Buc, Sir George, 245 

Buckingham, John Sheffield, first 
Duke of, 231, 381 

Bucknill, John Charles, on the poet's 
medical knowledge, 364 

Burbage, Cuthbert, 37, 200 

Burbage, James, owner of The 
Theatre and keeper of a livery 
stable, 33, 36; erects the Black- 
friars Theatre, 38 

Burbage, Richard, erroneously as- 
sumed to have been a native of 
Stratford, 31 n ; a lifelong friend 
of Shakespeare's, 36; demolishes 



INDEX 



45 



BURGERSDIJK 

The Theatre and builds the Globe 
Theatre, 37, 200; performs, with 
Shakespeare and Kemp, before 
Queen Elizabeth at Greenwich 
Palace, 43; his impersonation of 
the King in Richard III, 63 ; 
litigation of his heirs respecting 
the Globe and the Blackfriars 
theatres, 200; his income, 203, 
219 ; creates the title-part in Ham- 
let, 222, 231 ; his reputation made 
in leading parts of the poet's trage- 
dies, 264, 265 ; anecdote of the 
poet and, 265 ; the poet's bequest 
to, 276 

Burgersdijk, Dr. L. A. J., translation 
in Dutch by, 352 

Burghley, Lord, 375, 376, 378 

Burton, Francis, bookseller, 399 n 2, 
400 

Butter, Nathaniel, 180, 241 

'C., E.,' sonnet by, resemblance in 
Shakespeare's treatment of the 
ravages of lust with this subject in, 
153 n 1 ; his collection of sonnets, 
' Emaricdulfe,' 436 

Caliban, the character of, 253, 257, 
258, and notes 

Cambridge, Hamlet acted at, 224 

Cambridge edition of Shakespeare, 

324 
Camden, William, 191 
Campbell, Lord, on the poet's legal 

acquirements, 364 
Campion, Thomas, on Barnes's 

verse, 133 ; his sonnet to Lord 

Walden, 140; sonnets in Harleian 

MS., 437 and n 3 
Capell, Edward, reprint of Edward 

III in his 'Prolusions,' 71, 224; 

his edition of Shakespeare, 319; 

his works on the poet, 320 
Cardenio, the lost play of, 258, 259 
Carter, Rev. Thomas, on the alleged 

Puritan sympathies of Shake- 
speare's father, 10 n 
Casteliones y Montisis, Lope de 

Vega's, 55 n 1 
Castille, Constable of, entertainments 

in his honour at Whitehall, 233, 

2 34 
Castle, William, parish clerk of 
Stratford, 34 



CHETTLE 

Catherine II (of Russia), adaptation 
of the Merry Wives and King 
John by, 352, 353 

Cawood, Gabriel, publisher of ' Mary 
Magdalene's Funeral Tears,' 88 n 

Cecil, Sir Robert, an allusion to the 
Earl of Southampton by, 143 ; his 
relations with Southampton, 379, 
381, 382 

' Centurie of Spiritual Sonnets, A,' 
Barnes's, 132 

Cervantes, his ' Don Quixote ' the 
foundation of lost play of Car- 
denio, 258 ; death of, 272 n 1 

Chamberlain, the Lord, his company 
of players. See Hunsdon, first 
Lord and second Lord 

Chamberlain, John, 149, 261 n 

Chapman, George, plays on Biron's 
career by, 51 n, 395 n 1 ; his An 
Humorous Days Mirth, 51 n; 
his Blind Beggar of Alexandria, 
51 n ; his censure of sonnetteering, 
106; the question of his rivalry 
with Shakespeare for Southamp- 
ton's favour, 134, 135 n, 183; his 
translation of the 'Iliad,' 227; his 
sonnets to patrons, 388, 440 n; 
sonnets in praise of philosophy, 
441 

Charlecote Park, probably the scene 
of the poaching episode, 27, 28 

Charles I, the poet's plays the 
'closet companions' of his ' soli- 
tudes,' 329; his copy of the Second 
Folio, 312 

Charles II, his copy of the Second 
Folio, 312 

Chateaubriand, 349 

Chaucer, the story of ' Lucrece ' in 
his ' Legend of Good Women,' 76 ; 
hints in his ' Knight's Tale,' for 
Midsummer Night's Dream, 162 ; 
the plot of Troilus and Cressida 
taken from his ' Troilus and Cres- 
seid,' 227; plot of The Two Noble 
Kinsmen drawn from his ' Knight's 
Tale ' of Palamon and Arcite, 260 

Chenier, Marie Joseph, sides with 
Voltaire in the Shakespearean con- 
troversy, 349 

Chester, Robert, his ' Love's Mar- 
tyr,' 183, 184 n 

Chettle, Henry, the publisher, his 



452 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



CHETWYNDE 

description of Shakespeare as an 
actor, 43, 48 n; his apology for 
Greene's attack on Shakespeare, 
58, 225, 277 ; appeals to Shake- 
speare to write an elegy on Queen 
Elizabeth, 230 

Chetwynde, Peter, publisher, 312 

Chiswell, R., 313 

'Chloris,' title of William Smith's 
collection of sonnets, 437 and n 4 

Chronology of Shakespeare's plays : 
48-57, 59, 63-72, 161 seq., 207 seq., 
235 seq., 248 seq. 

Churchyard, Thomas, his Fantas- 
ticall Monarches Epitaph, 51 n; 
calls Barnes ' Petrarch's scholar,' 

133 

Cibber, Colley, 335 

Cibber, Mrs., 336 

Cibber, Theophilus, the reputed com- 
piler of ' Lives of the Poets,' 32 and 

*3. 33 

Cinthio, the ' Hecatommithi ' of, 
Shakespeare's indebtedness to, 14, 
53, 236; his tragedy, Epitia, 237 

Clark, Mr. W. G., 325 

Clement, Nicolas, criticism of the 
poet by, 347, 348 

Cleopatra : the poet's allusion to her 
part being played by a boy, 38 n 2 ; 
compared with the ' dark lady ' of 
the sonnets, 123, 124; her moral 
worthiessness, 245 

Give, Mrs., 336 

Clopton, Sir Hugh, the former owner 
of New Place, 193 

Clopton, Sir John, 283 

Clytemnestra, resemblance between 
Lady Macbeth and, 13 n 

Cobham, Henry Brooke, eighth 
Lord, 169 

'Ccelia,' love-sonnets by William 
Browne entitled, 439 and n 2 

' Ccelia,' title of Percy's collection of 
sonnets, 435 

' Ccelica,' title of Fulke Greville's col- 
lection of poems, 97 n 

Cokain, Sir Aston, lines on Shake- 
speare and Wincot ale by, 166 

Coleridge, S. T., on the style of 
Antony and Cleopatra, 245 ; The 
Two Noble Kinsmen, 259; repre- 
sentative of the aesthetic school, 
333 ; on Edmund Kean, 338, 365 



CONTENTION 

Collier, John Payne, includes Mu- 
cedorus in his edition of Shake- 
speare, 72 ; his reprint of Drayton's 
sonnets, no n; his forgeries in 
the ' Perkins Folio,' 312 and n 2, 
317 n 2, 324, 333; his other forg- 
eries (Appendix I.), 362, 367-9 

Collins, Mr. Churton, 317 n 1 

Collins, Francis, Shakespeare's solic- 
itor, 271, 273 

Collins, Rev. John, 321 

Colte, Sir Henry, 410 n 

Combe, John, bequest left to the poet 
by, 269 ; lines written upon his 
system of money-lending, 269 n 

Combe, Thomas, legacy of the poet 
to, 276 

Combe, William, his attempt to en- 
close common land at Stratford, 
269 

Comedy of Errors : the plot drawn 
from Plautus, 16, 54 ; date of pub- 
lication, 53; allusion to the civil 
war in France, 53 ; possibly founded 
on The Historie of Error y 54; 
performed in the hall of Gray's 
Inn 1594, 70; a second perform- 
ance in the hall of Gray's Inn in 
1895, 70 n. For editions see Sec- 
tion xix. (Bibliography), 301-25 

' Complainte of Rosamond,' Daniel's, 
parallelisms in Romeo and Juliet 
with, 56; its topic and metre re- 
flected in ' Lucrece,' 76, 77 and n 1, 

43i 

Concordances to Shakespeare, 364 
and n 

Condell, Henry, actor and a life- 
long friend of Shakespeare's, 36, 
202, 203, 264; the poet's bequest 
to him, 276; signs dedication of 
First Folio, 303, 306 

Confess io Amantis, Gower's, 244 

Conspiracie of Duke Btron, The, 
51 n 

Constable, Henry, piratical publi- 
cation of the sonnets of, 88 n ; fol- 
lowed Desportes in naming his 
collection of sonnets ' Diana,' 104, 
431 ; inclusion of sonnets by other 
authors in ' Diana,' 431, 432 ; dedi- 
catory sonnets, 440 ; religious son- 
nets, 440 

Contention betwixt the two famotis 



INDEX 



453 



houses of Yorke and Lancaster, 
first part of the, 59 

' Contr' Amours,' jodelle's, parody 
of the vituperative sonnet in, 122 
and ?i 

Cooke, Sir Anthony, 436 

Cooke, George Frederick, actor, 338 

Coral, comparison of lips with, 118 
and n 2 

Coriolanus : date of first publica- 
tion, 246; derived from North's 
'Plutarch,' 246; literal reproduc- 
tion of the text of Plutarch, 246 
and 71 ; originality of the humorous 
scenes, 246; date of composition, 

246, 247 ; general characteristics, 

247. For editions see Section xix. 
(Bibliography), 301-25 

' Coronet for his mistress Philosophy, 

A,' by Chapman, 106 
Coryat, ' Odcombian Banquet' by, 

395 

Cotes, Thomas, printer, 312 

Cotswolds, the, Shakespeare's allu- 
sion to, 168 

Court, the, Shakespeare's relations 
with, 81, 83, 230, 232-4, cf. 251 n, 
254 n, 255 n, 264 

Cowden-Clarke, Mrs., 364 

Cowley, actor, 208 

'Crabbed age and youth,' &c, 182 n 

Craig, Mr. W. J., 325 

Creede, Thomas, draft of the Merry 
Wives of Windsor printed by, 172 ; 
draft of Henry V printed by, 173 ; 
fraudulently assigns plays to Shake- 
speare, 179, 180 

' Cromwell, History of Thomas, 
Lord,' 313 

'Cryptogram, The Great,' 372 

Cupid, Shakespeare's addresses to, 
compared with the invocations of 
Sidney, Drayton, Lyly, and others, 

97 « 

Curtain Theatre, Moorfields, one of 
the only two theatres existing in 
London at the period of Shake- 
speare's arrival, 32, 36 ; the scene 
of some of the poet's performances, 
37 ; closed at the period of the 
Civil War, 37, 233 n 1 

Cushman, Charlotte, 342 

Cymbeline : adapted from Holinshed 
and the 'Decameron,' 249; the 



D'AVENANT 

story told in ' Westward for Smelts,' 
249; introduction of Calvinistic 
terms, 250 and n ; Imogen, 250; 
resemblance to As You Like It, 
250; Dr. Forman's note on its per- 
formance, 250. For editions see 
Section xix. (Bibliography), 301- 

25 

' Cynthia,' Barnfield's, adulation of 
Queen Elizabeth in, 137 n, 435 

'Cynthia,' Ralegh's, extravagant 
apostrophe to Queen Elizabeth 
in, 137 n 

Cynthia's Revels, performed at Black- 
friars Theatre, 215 

Cyrano de Bergerac, plagiarisms of 
Shakespeare by, 347 



' Daiphantus,' allusion to the poet 
in Scoloker's, 277 

Daniel, Samuel, parallelisms in 
Romeo and Juliet with his ' Com- 
plainte of Rosamond,' 56, 61 ; 
the topic and metre of the ' Com- 
plainte of Rosamond ' reflected in 
' Lucrece,' 76, yj and n 1 ; feigning 
old age, 86 n ; his sonnet (xlix.) 
on Sleep, 101 ; admits plagiarism 
of Petrarch in his ' Delia,' 101 n 4 ; 
followed Maurice Seve in naming 
his collection of sonnets, 104, 430 ; 
claims immortality for his son- 
nets, 115 ; his prefatory sonnet in 
' Delia,' 130, 429 ; celebrates in 
verse Southampton's release from 
prison, 149, 388 ; his indebtedness 
to Desportes, 430 ; to De Baif and 
Pierre de Brach, 431 ; popularity 
of his sonnets, 431 

Danish, translations of Shakespeare 
in, 354 

Danter, John, prints surreptitiously 
Romeo and Juliet, 56 ; Titus An- 
dronicus entered at Stationers' Hall 
by, 66 

Daurat-Dinemandy, Jean, one of ' La 
Pleiade,' 443 

D'Avenant, John, keeps the Crown 
Inn, Oxford, 265 

D'Avenant, Sir William, relates the 
story of Shakespeare holding 
horses outside playhouses, 33 ; 
hands down the story of South- 



454 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



DAVIES 

ampton's gift to Shakespeare, 126, 
374; the story of Shakespere's 
paternity of, 265, 328. 

Davies, Archdeacon, vicar of Saper- 
ton, his testimony to Shakespeare's 
' unluckiness ' in poaching, 27 ; his | 
allusion to the caricature of Sir 
Thomas Lucy in ' Justice Clodpate' 
(Justice Shallow), 29, 362 

Davies, John, of Hereford, 44, 149, 
388, 439; sonnets to patrons, 440 n 

Davies, Sir John : his ' gulling son- 
nets,' 106, 107 and n 1, 128 n, 
435, 436; his apostrophe to Queen 
Elizabeth, 137 n, 273 

Davison, Francis, his translation of 
Petrarch's sonnet, 101 n 4 ; dedica- 
tion of his ' Poetical Rhapsody ' to 
the Earl of Pembroke, 413 

De Chatelain, Chevalier, rendering 
of Hamlet by, 351 

Death-mask, the Kesselstadt, 296 and 
and n 1 

' Decameron,' the, indebtedness of 
Shakespeare to, 163, 249, 251 and 
n 2 

' Declaration of Popish Impostures,' 
Harsnet's, hints for King Lear 
taken from, 241 

Dedications, 392-400 

' Dedicatory ' sonnets, of Shake- 
speare, 125 seq. ; of other Eliza- 
bethan poets, 138 n 2, 140, 141 

Defence of Cony- Catching, 47 n 

Dekker, Thomas, 48 n ; the quar- 
rel with Ben Jonson, 214-20, 228 n, 
225 ; his account of King James's 
entry into London, 232; his song 
' Oh, sweet content,' an echo of 
Barnes's ' Ah, sweet Content,' 433 
n 1 

' Delia,' title of Daniel's collection 
of sonnets, 104, 118 n 2, 130, 
430, 434. See also under Daniel, 
Samuel 

' Delie,' sonnets by Seve entitled, 442 

Delius, Nikolaus, edition of Shake- 
speare by, 324; studies of the \ 
text and metre of the poet by, 

345 

Dennis, John, his account of the 
Merry Wives of Windsor, 171, 172; 
his tribute to the poet, 332 

Derby, Ferdinando Stanley, Earl of, 



the Earl of Leicester's company of 
actors passes to his patronage, 35 ; 
on his death his place as patron is 
filled successively by the two Lord 
Hunsdons, 35 ; performances by 
the company, 56, 59, 66, 73 ; Spen- 
ser's bestowal of the title of ' Amyn- 
tas ' on, 385 n 2 

Derbv, William Stanley, Earl of, 
161 

Desmond, Earl of, Ben Jonson's 
apostrophe to the, 140 

Desportes, Philippe, his sonnet on 
Sleep, 101 and Appendix IX. ; 
plagiarised by Drayton and others, 
103 and n 3, 430 seq. ; plagiarised 
indirectly by Shakespeare, no, in; 
his claim for the immortality of 
verse, 114 and n 1 ; Daniel's in- 
debtedness to, 430, 431, 443, 444, 

445 « 
Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft, 

365 

Devrient family, the stage represen- 
tation of Shakespeare by, 346 

Diana, George de Montemayor's the 
source of the story of Two Gentle- 
men of Verona, 53 ; translations 

of. 53 ' 

' Diana ' the title of Constable's col- 
lection of sonnets, 88 n, 96 n, 104 

Diderot, opposition to Voltaire's 
strictures by, 348 

' Diella,' sonnets by ' R. L.' [Richard 
Linche], 437 

Digges, Leonard, on the superior 
popularity of Julius Ccesar to 
Jonson's Catiline, 220 n; com- 
mendatory verses on the poet, 
276 n 1 ; on the poet's popularity, 
300, 306, 329 

' Don Quixote,' the lost play Car- 
denio probably drawn from, 258 

Doncaster, occurrence of the name 
of Shakespeare at, 1 

Donne, Dr. John, his poetic ad- 
dresses to "the Countess of Bed- 
ford, 138 n 2; expression of 
' love ' in his ' Verse Letters,' 
141 ; his anecdote about Shake- 
speare and jonson, 177 

Donnelly, Mr." Ignatius, 372 

Dorell, Hadrian, writer of the pref- 
ace to the story of ' Avisa,' 157 



INDEX 



455 



DOUBLE 

Double Falsehood, or the Distrcst 
Lovers, 259 and n 1 

Douce, Francis, 364 

Dowdall, John, 362 

Dowden, Professor, 333, 364, 365, 416 n 

Drake, Nathan, 363 

Drayton, Michael, 61; feigning old 
age in" Ms sonnets, 86 ?i; his in- 
vocations to Cupid, 97 ?i ; pla- 
giarisms in his sonnets, 103 and 
n 2, 434; follows Claude de Pon- 
toux in naming his heroine ' Idea,' 
104, 105 n 1 ; his admission of 
insincerity in his sonnets, 105 ; 
Shakespeare's indebtedness to his 
sonnets, iio?z; claims immortality 
for his sonnets, 115; use of the 
word ' love,' 127 n ; title of ' Hymn ' 
given to some of his poems, 135 n ; 
identified by some as the 'rival 
poet,' 135 ; the adulation in his 
sonnets, 138 n 2; Shakespeare's 
Sonnet cxliv. adapted from, 153 n 
2; entertained by Shakespeare at 
New Place, Stratford, 271, 427 n 2 ; 
greetings to his patrons in his 
works, 398 

Droeshout, Martin, engraver of the 
portrait in the First Folio, 287-8 ; 
his uncle of the same name, a 
painter, 290 

Droitwich, native place of John 
Heming, one of Shakespeare's 
actor- friends, 31 n 

Drummond, William of Hawthorn- 
den, his translation of Petrarch's 
sonnets, 104 « 4, in n; Italian ori- 
gin of his love-sonnets, 104 and n ; 
translation of Petrarch's Sonnet 
xlii., in n; translation of a vitu- 
perative sonnet from Marino, | 
122 n 1 ; translation of a sonnet j 
by Tasso, 152 ?i ; self-reproach- 
ful sonnets by, 152 n. See also 
(Appendix) 439 and 71 1 

Dryden, on Shakespeare, 330; pre- 
sented with a copy of the Chandos | 
portrait, 330, 361 

Ducis, Jean-Francois, adaptations 
of the poet for the French stage 
by, 349. 352 

Dugdale, Gilbert, 231 n 

Dulwich, manor of, purchased by 
Edward Alleyn, 204, 233 n 1 



ELIZABETH 

Dumain, Lord, in Love's Labour's 

Lost, 51 ?i 
Dumas, Alexandre, adaptation of 

Hamlet ; by, 351 
Duport, Paul, repeats Voltaire's 

censure, 350 
Dyce, Alexander, 239 n 1 ; on The 

Two Noble Kinsmen, 259; his 

edition of Shakespeare, 323 



ECCLESIASTES, Book of, poetical 

versions of, 441 and n 1 
Eden, translation of Magellan's 

' Voyage to the South Pole ' bv, 

253 

Edgar, Eleazar, publisher, 390 

Editions of Shakespeare's works. 
See under Quarto and Folio 

Editors of Shakespeare, in the 
eighteenth century, 313-22; in 
the nineteenth century, 323-5 ; 
variorum, 322, 323 

Education of Shakespeare: the 
poet's masters at Stratford Gram- 
mar School, 13; his instruction 
mainly confined to the Latin lan- 
guage and literature, 13 ; evidences 
of the poet's knowledge of Latin 
and French, 15, 16; probable date 
of Shakespeare's removal from 
school, 18 

Edward II, Marlowe's, Richard II 
suggested by, 64 

Edward III, a play of uncertain 
authorship, sometimes assigned to 
Shakespeare, 71 ; quotation from 
one of Shakespeare's sonnets, 72, 
89, and n 2 

Edwardes, Richard, author of the 
lost play Palcemo?i and Arcyte, 260 

Edwards, Thomas, ' Canons of Criti- 
cism ' of, 319 

Eld, George, printer of the pirated 
sonnets, 90, 180, 399 n 2, 401, 402 

Elizabeth, Princess, marriage of, 
performance of The Tempest, &c, 
at, 254, 258, 263 

Elizabeth, Queen : her visit to Kenil- 
worth, 17 ; Shakespeare and other 
actors play before her at Green- 
wich Palace, 43, 70, 81 ; her 
enthusiasm for Falstaff, 82; ex- 
travagant compliments to, 137; 



456 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



ELIZABETHAN 

called ' Cynthia ' by the poets, 148 ; 
elegies on, 147, 148 ; compliment 
to, in Midsummer Night's Dream, 
161 ; her objections to Richard II, 
175; death, 230; her imprison- 
ment of Southampton, 380 

Elizabethan Stage Society, 70 n, 210 
n 2 

Elton, Q.C., Mr. Charles, 274 n 

Elze, Eriedrich Karl, 4 Life of Shake- 
speare ' by, 364 ; studies of Shake- 
speare by, 345 

' Emaricdulfe,' sonnets by ' E. C.,' 

153 * 1, 436 

Endymion, Lyly's, influence in Love's 
Labour's Lost of, 62 

Error, Historie of. See Comedy of 
E?-rors 

Eschenburg, Johann Joachim, 343 

Essex, Robert Devereux, second 
Earl of, company of actors under 
the patronage of, 33 ; noticed in 
Henry V, 174 ; trial and execution, 
175, 176; his relations with the 
Earl of Southampton, 376, 377, 
380, 383 

Eton, debate about Shakespeare at, 
382 ?i 

Euphues, Lyly's, Polonius's advice to 
Laertes borrowed from, 62 n 

Euripides, Andro?nache of, 13 n 

Evans, Sir Hugh, Latin phrases 
quoted by, 15; Marlowe's 'Come 
live with me and be my love,' 
quoted by, 65 

Evelyn, John, 329 n 2 

Every Man in his Humour, Shake- 
speare takes a part in the per- 
formance of, 44, 176; prohibition 
on its publication, 208 



FA IRE EM, sometimes assigned to 
Shakespeare, 72 

Falstaff, Queen Elizabeth's enthusi- 
asm for, 82, 171 ; named originally 
in Henry IV ' Sir John Oldcastle,' 
169; the attraction of, 170; his 
last moments, 173 ; letter from the 
Countess of Southampton on, 383 
and n 1 

Farmer, Dr. Richard, on Shake- 
speare's education, 14, 15, 363 

Farmer, Mr. John S., 386 n 1 



FOLIO 

' Farmer MS., the Dr.,' 107 n \ 

Fastolf, Sir John, 170 

Faucit, Helen, 339. See also Martin, 
Lady 

Felix and Philomena, history of, 53 

' Fidessa,' Griffin's, 182 n, 431, 437 

Field, Henry, father of the London 
printer, 186 

Field, Richard, native of Stratford 
and a friend of Shakespeare, 32; 
apprenticed to the London printer, 
Thomas Vautrollier, 32; publishes 
'Venus and Adonis,' 74, 396, and 
' Lucrece,' 76, 396 

Finnish, translations of Shakespeare 
.in, 354 

Fiorentino, Ser Giovanni, Shake- 
speare's indebtedness to his ' II 
Pecorone,' 14, 66, 172 

Fisher, Mr. Clement, 166 

Fitton, Mary, and the ' dark lady,' 
123 n, 406 n, 415 ?i 

Fleay, Mr. F. G., 49 n, no n, 363 

Fletcher, Giles, on the ravages of 
Time, 77 « 2; his 'imitation' of 
other poets, 103 ; his ' Licia,' 433 

Fletcher, John, 181, 184, 258, 259 ; col- 
laborates with Shakespeare in The 
Two Noble Kinsmen and Henry 
VIII, 259, 262, 263 

Fletcher, Lawrence, actor, 41 and n 

If 23 1 

Florio, John, and Holofernes, 51 n, 
84 n ; the sonnet prefixed to his 
' Second Frutes,' 84 and n ; known 
to Shakespeare as Southampton's 
protege, 84 n ; his translation of 
Montaigne's 'Essays,' 84 71, 253; 
his ' Worlde of Wordes,' 84 n, 387 ; 
his praise of Southampton, 131 
(and Appendix IV.) ; Southamp- 
ton's Italian tutor, 376, 384 

Folio, the First, 1623 : the syndicate 
for its production, 303, 304; its 
contents, 305, 306 ; prefatory mat- 
ter, 306, 307; value of the text, 
307 ; order of the plays, 307, 308 ; 
the typography, 308 ; unique copies, 
308-10 ; the Sheldon copy, 309 and 
n, 310; estimated number of ex- 
tant copies, 311 ; reprints, 311 ; the 
'Daniel' copy, 311 

Folio, the Second, 312 

Folio, the Third, 312, 313 



INDEX 



457 



Folio, the Fourth, 313 

Ford, John, 97 n 

Forgeries, Shakespearean (Appendix 

I.), 3 I2 « 2 - 3 6 5-9 
Forman, Dr. Simon, 239, 250 
Forrest, Edwin, American actor, 342 
Fortune Theatre, 212, 233 n 1 
France, Shakespeare in, 347-50; 
stage representation of the poet in, 
350, 351 ; the sonnet in (Appendix 

X.). 442-5 
Fraunce, Abraham, 385 n 2 
Freiligrath, Ferdinand von, German 

translation of Shakespeare by, 344 
French, the poet's acquaintance with, 

14. IS- 

French, George Russell, 363 

'Freyndon' (or Frittenden), 1 

Friendship, sonnets of, Shakespeare's, 
136, 138-47 

Frittenden, Kent. See Freyndon 

Fulbroke Park, 28 

Fuller, Thomas, allusion in his 
'Worthies' to Sir John Fastolf, 
170 ; to the ' wit combats ' between 
Shakespeare and Jonson, 178; 
biographical notice of the poet, 
361 

Fulman, Rev. W., 362 

Furness, Mr. H. H., his ' New Vario- 
rum ' edition of Shakespeare, 323, 

34i 
Furness, Mrs. H. H., 364 
Furnivall, Dr. F. J., 49 n, 302 n, 325, 

334- 3 6 4 

Gale, Dunstan, 397 

Ganymede, Barnfield's sonnets to, 
435 and n 4 

Garnett, Henry, the Jesuit, 239 

Garrick, David, 315, 334, 335-7 _ 

Gascoigne, George, his definition of 
a sonnet, 95 n 2 ; his 'Supposes,' 
164 

Gastrell, Rev. Francis, buys New 
Place in 1752, 283 

Gates, Sir Thomas, 252 

Germany, Shakespearean representa- 
tions in, 340, 346 ; translations of 
the poet's works and criticisms 
in, 342-6; Shakespeare Society in, 
346 

Gervinus, ' Commentaries ' by, 49 n, 
346 



' Gesta Romanorum,' 67 

Ghost in Hamlet, the, played by 
Shakespeare, 44 

Gilchrist, Octavius, 363 

Gildon, Charles, on the Merry Wives 
of Windsor, 172 ; on the supremacy 
of Shakespeare as a poet, 328 n 

' Globe ' edition of Shakespeare, 

325 

Globe Theatre : built in 1599, 37, 196 ; 
described by Shakespeare, 37, cf. 
173 ; profits shared by Shakespeare, 
37, 196; revival of Richard II at, 
I 75 1 litigation of Burbage's heirs, 
200; prices of admission, 201 ; an- 
nual receipts, 201 ; performance of 
A Winter's Tale, 251 ; its destruc- 
tion by fire, 260, 261 n; the new 
building, 260 ; Shakespeare's dis- 
posal of his shares, 264 

Goethe, on Shakespeare, 345 

Golding, Arthur, his English version 
of the ' Metamorphoses,' 15, 16, 
116 n, 162, 253 

Gollancz, Mr. Israel, 222 n, 325 

Googe, Barnabe, 427 n 2 

Gosson, Stephen, 67 

Gottsched, J. C, denunciation of 
Shakespeare by, 343 

Gounod, opera of Romeo and Juliet 

by, 351 

Gower, John, in Pericles, 244; his 
'Confessio Amantis,' 244 

Gower, Lord Ronald, 297 

Grammaticus, Saxo, 222 

Grave, Shakespeare's, and the in- 
scription upon it, 272 

Gray's Inn Hall, performance of The 
Comedy 0/ Errors in, 70 and n 

Greek, Shakespeare's knowledge of, 
13 and ;/, 16 

Green, C. F., 364 

Greene, Robert, 47 n ; his attack on 
Shakespeare, 57 ; and the original 
draft of Henry VI, 60 ; his influence 
on Shakespeare, 61, 73; describes 
a meeting with a player, 198 ; A 
Winter's Tale founded on his 
Pandosto, 251 ; dedicatory greet- 
ings in his works, 398 

Greene, Thomas, actor at the Red 
Bull Theatre, 31 n 

Greene, Thomas (' alias Shake- 
speare'), a tenant of New Place, 



458 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



GREENWICH 

and Shakespeare's legal adviser, 
195, 206, 269, 270 and n 

Greenwich Palace, 43, 44 n 1, 70, 81, 
82 

Greet, hamlet in Gloucestershire, 
identical with ' Greece ' in the 
Taming of The Shrew, 167 

Grendon, near Oxford, 31 

Greville, Sir Fulke, 88 //, 97 n; his 
' Sonnets,' &c, 438, 439 

Griffin, Bartholomew, 182 n ; pla- 
giarises Daniel, 431, 437 

Griggs, Mr. W., 302 n 

Grimm, Baron, 349, 350// 1 

'Groats-worth of Wit,' Greene's 
pamphlet, 57 

Guizot, Francois, 350 

' Gulling sonnets,' Sir John Davies's, 
106, 107, 435, 436; Shakespeare's 
Sonnet xxvi. parodied in, 128 n 



' H., MR. W.,' 'patron' of Thorpe's 
pirated issue of the Sonnets, 92; 
identified with William Hall, 92, 
402,403, 406 seq.; his publication 
of Southwell's ' A Foure-fold Medi- 
tation,' 92; erroneously assumed 
to indicate the Earl of Pembroke, 
93, 94, and William Hughes, 93 n; 
his true relations with Thomas 
Thorpe (Appendix v.), 390-405 

Hacket, Marian and Cicely, in the 
Taming of The Shrew, 164-6 

Hair, women's, described as ' wires,' 
118 and n 2 

Hal, Prince, 169, 173 

Hales, John (of Eton), on the supe- 
riority of Shakespeare, 328 and n 

Hall, Elizabeth, the poet's grand- 
daughter, 192, 266, 275 ; her first 
marriage to Thomas Nash, and 
her second marriage to John 
Barnard (or Bernard), 282; her 
death and will, 282, 283 

Hall, Dr. John, the poet's son-in- 
law, 266, 268, 273, 281 

Hall, Mrs. Susannah, the poet's elder 
daughter, 192, 205, 266, 267 ; in- 
herits the chief part of the poet's 
estate, 275, 281 ; her death and 
tomb, 281 

Hall, William, (1) on the poet's 
grave, 272 and n 2, 362 



Hall, William, (2). See ' H., Mr. W.' 

Halliwell-Phillipps, James Orchard, 
the collection of, 267 n ; his edition 
of Shakespeare, 312, 325 ; his la- 
bours on Shakespeare's biography, 
333, 363, 364 

Hamlet, 13 n, 62 n ; allusion to boy- 
actors, 213 11 2, 214 and 71 1, 216; 
date of production, 221 ; previous 
popularity of the story, 221 and n ; 
sources drawn upon by the poet, 
221-2; Burbage in the title-part, 
222 ; the problem of its publica- 
tion, 222-4 ; the three versions, 
222-4; Theobald's emendations, 
224; its world-wide popularity, 
224. For editions see Section xix. 
(Bibliography), 301-25 

Hanmer, Sir Thomas, 224; his edi- 
tion of Shakespeare, 318 

Harington, Sir John, translates 
Ariosto, 208 

Harington, Lucy, her marriage to 
the third Earl of Bedford, 161 

Harness, William, 324 . 

Harrison, John, publisher of ' Lu- 
crece,' 76 

Harsnet, ' Declaration of Popish Im- 
postures ' by, 241 

Hart family, the, and the poet's 
reputed birthplace, 8 

Hart, Joan, Shakespeare's sister, 8 ; 
her three sons, 276, 283 

Hart, John, 283 

Hart, Joseph C., 371 

Harvey, Gabriel, 101 ; justifies the 
imitation of Petrarch, 101 n 4; his 
parody of sonnetteering, 106, 121 
and n ; his advice to Barnes, 133 ; 
his ' Four Letters and certain 
Sonnets,' 440 

Hathaway, Anne. See Shakespeare, 
Anne 

Hathaway, Catherine, sister of Anne 
Hathaway, 19 

Hathaway, Joan, mother of Anne 
Hathaway, 19 

Hathaway, Richard, marriage of his 
daughter Anne (or Agnes) to the 
poet, 18, 19-22; his will, 19 

Haughton, William, 48 n, 418 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 371 

Hazlitt, William, and his Shake- 
spearean criticism, 333, 364, 365 



INDEX 



459 



HEALEY 

Healey, John, 400, 403 n 2, 408, 409 

' Hecatommithi,' Cinthio's, Shake- 
speare's indebtedness to, 14, 53, 
236 

Heine, studies of Shakespeare's 
heroines of, 345 

Helena in All's Well that Ends Well, 
163 

Heming, John (actor-friend of Shake- 
speare's), 31 n, 36, 202, 203, 264; 
the poet's bequest to, 276; signs 
dedication of First Folio, 303,306 

Henderson, John, actor, 337 

Heneage, Sir Thomas, 375 n 3 

Henley-in-Arden, 4 

Henrietta Maria, Queen, at Strat- 
ford, 281 

Henry IV (parts i. and ii.), 62 n; 
sources of, 167; Justice Shallow, 
29, 168 ; references to persons and 
districts familiar to the poet, 167, 
168 ; the characters, 168-70. For 
edition see Section xix. (Bibliogra- 
phy), 301-25 

Henry V, The Famous Victories of, 
part of the groundwork of Henry 
IV and of Henry V, 167, 174 

Henry V: French dialogues in, 15, 
37 ; disdainful allusion to sonnet- 
teering, 108 ; date of production, 
173 ; issue of imperfect drafts of the 
play, 173; the poet's final experi- 
ment in the dramatisation of Eng- 
lish history, 174 ; allusions to the 
Earl of Essex, 175. For editions 
see Section xix. (Bibliography), 

3 OI - 2 5 

Henry VI (pt. i.) : performed at the 
Rose Theatre in 1592, 56 ; Nash's 
remarks on, 56, 57 ; first publica- 
tion, 58 ; contains only a slight 
impress of the poet's style, 59 

Henry VI (pt. ii.), 13 n; publication 
of a first draft, 59; revision of the 
play, 60 ; the poet's coadjutors in 
the revision, 60 

Henry VI (pt. iii.) : one of the only 
two plays of the poet's performed 
by a company other than his own, 
36 ; performed in the autumn of 
I 59 2 - 57 ; publication of a first 
draft, 59; performed by Lord 
Pembroke's men, 36, 59 ; partly 
remodelled, 60; the poet's coad- 



jutors in the revision, 60. For 
editions see Section xix. (Bibliog- 
raphy), 301-25 

Henry VIII: 174; attributed to 
Shakespeare and Fletcher, 259; 
noticed by Sir Henry Wotton, 261 ; 
date of first publication, 261 ; the 
portions that can confidently be 
assigned to Shakespeare, 262; un- 
certain authorship of Wolsey's 
farewell to Cromwell, 262; the 
theory of James Spedding as to, 
263. For editions see Section xix. 
(Bibliography), 301-25 

Henryson, Robert, 227 

Henslowe, Philip, erects the Rose 
Theatre, 36, 48 n, 180 n, 225, 260 

' Heptameron of Civil Discources,' 
Whetstone's, 237 

' Herbert, Mr. William,' his alleged 
identity with ' Mr. W. H.' (Ap- 
pendix VI.), 406-IO 

Herder, Johann Gottfried, 343 

' Hero and Leander,' Marlowe's, 
quotation in As You Like It from, 
64 

Herringman, H., 313 

Hervey, Sir William, 375 n 3 

Hess, J. R., 342 

Heyse, Paul, German translation of 
Shakespeare by, 344 

Heywood, Thomas, 48 n ; two of his 
poems pirated in the ' Passionate 
Pilgrim,' 182, 301, 328 

Hill, John, marriage of his widow, 
Agnes or Anne, to Robert Arden, 
6 

Holinshed, ' Chronicles ' of, mate- 
rials taken by Shakespeare from, 
17, 47, 63, 64, 167, 239, 241, 249, 

364 
Holland, translations of Shakespeare 

in, 352 

Holland, Hugh, 306 

Holmes, Nathaniel, 372 

Holmes, William, bookseller, 403 ;z 1 

Holofernes, 15 ; groundless assump- 
tion that he is a caricature of 
Florio, 51 n, 84 n 

Horace, his claim for the immortality 
of verse, 114 and n 1, 116 n 

Hotspur, 168, 169 

Howard of Effingham, the Lord 
Admiral, Charles, Lord, his com- 



460 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



pany of actors, 35, 37 ; Spenser's 

sonnet to, 140 
Hudson, Rev. H. N., 325 
Hughes, Mrs. Margaret, the first 

woman to play female parts in 

place of boys, 335 
Hughes, William, and 'Mr. W. H.,' 

93 « 

Hugo, Francois Victor, translation 
of Shakespeare by, 350 

Hugo, Victor, 350 

Humorous Day's Mirth, An, 51 n 

Hungary, translations and perform- 
ances of Shakespeare in, 353 

Hunsdon (Lord Chamberlain), 
George Carey, second Lord, his 
company of players, 35 ; promo- 
tion of the company to be the 
King's players, 35 

Hunsdon (Lord Chamberlain), 
Henry Carey, first Lord, his com- 
pany of players, 35 ; and Shake- 
speare, 36 

Hunt, Thomas, one of the masters 
of Stratford Grammar School, 13 

Hunter, Rev. Joseph, 333, 363, 406 

'Huon of Bordeaux,' hints for the 
story of Oberon from, 162 

' Hymn,' use of the word as the title 
of poems, 133, 134, 135 n 



'Idea,' title of Drayton's collection 
of sonnets, 104, 105, 434 

' Ignoto,' 183 

Immortality of verse, claimed by 
Shakespeare for his sonnets, 113, 
114, 115 and n 

Imogen, the character of, 249, 250 

Income, Shakespeare's, 196-204 

India, translations and representa- 
tions of Shakespeare in, 354 

Jngannati (GT), its resemblance to 
Twelfth Night, 210 

Ingram, Dr., on the 'weak endings' 
in Shakespeare, 49 n 

Ireland forgeries, the (Appendix I.), 
366 

Ireland, Samuel, 28 

Irishman, the only one in Shake- 
speare's dramatis per sonce, 173 

Irving, Sir Henry, 339 

Italian, the poet's acquaintance with, 
14-16, cf. 66 n 3 



JONSON 

Italy, Shakespeare's alleged know- 
ledge of, 43; translations and per- 
formances of Shakespeare in, 352 ; 
sonnetteeis of sixteenth century in, 
442 n 2 

Itinerary of Shakespeare's company 
between 1593 and 1614, 40 and n 1 



JAGGARD, Isaac, 305 

Jaggard, William, and ' Passionate 
Pilgrim,' 89, 182, 299, 390, 396; 
and the First Folio, 303, 304 

James VI of Scotland and I of Eng- 
land, his favour to actors, 41 n 1 ; 
his appreciation of Shakespeare, 
82; his accession to the English 
throne, 147-9; grants a license to 
the poet and his company, 230; 
patronage of Shakespeare, 232-4 ; 
performances of Shakespeare's 
plays before, 235, 236, 239, 251 and 
n, 254, 255, 256 n ; sonnets tu, 440 

James, Sir Henry, 311 

Jameson, Mrs., 365 

Jamyn, Amadis, 432, 443, 444, 455 n 

Jansen or Janssen, Gerard, 276 

Jansen, Cornelius, the painter, 294 

Jeronimo and Hamlet, 221 n 

Jew of Malta, Marlowe's, 68 

Jew . . . showne at the Bull, a lobt 
play, 67 

Jodelle, Estienne, resemblances in 
'Venus and Adonis' to a poem 
by, 75 n 2; his parody of the 
vituperative sonnet, 121, 122 and 
n (auot.) ; one of ' La Pleiade,' 443 

John, King, old play on, attributed 
to the poet, 181 

John, King : Shakespeare's play of, 
69, 70. For editions see Section 
xix. (Bibliography), 301-25 

Johnson, Dr., 33; his edition of 
Shakespeare, 319-21 ; his reply to 
Voltaire, 348 

Johnson, Gerard, his monument to 
the poet in Stratford Church, 276 

Johnson, Robert, lyrics set to music 
by, 255 and n 2 

Jones, Inigo, 38 n 2 

Jonson, Ben, on Shakespeare's lack 
of exact scholarship, 16; Shake- 
speare takes part in the perform- 
ance of Every Man in His Humour 



INDEX 



461 



JORDAN 

and in Sejanus, 44; on Titus An- 
dronicus, 65; on the appreciation 
of Shakespeare shown by Eliza- 
beth and James I, 82; on metrical 
artifice in sonnets, 106 n 1 ; use of 
the word 'lover,' 127 n; identified 
by some as the 'rival poet,' 136; 
his ' dedicatory ' sonnets, 138 n 2, 
140; relations with Shakespeare, 
176, 177 ; share in the appendix to 
' Love's Martyr,' 183; quarrel with 
Marston and Dekker, 214-20; his 
' Poetaster,' 217, 218 and n ; allu- 
sions to him in the Return from 
Parnassus, 219 ; his criticism of 
Julius Ccesar, 220 n ; satiric allu- 
sion to A Winter 's Tale, 251, and 
The Tempest, 256 ; entertained by 
Shakespeare, 271 ; testimony to 
Shakespeare's character, 277 ; his 
tribute to Shakespeare, 306, 311, 
327 ; Thorpe's publication of works 
by, 395 n 3, 401 ; his Hue and Cry 
after Cupid, 432 n 2 
Jordan, John, forgeries of (Appen- 
dix I.), 365, 366 
Jordan, Mrs., 338, 339 
Jordan, Thomas, 335 n 
Jourdain, Sylvester, 252 
'Jubilee,' Shakespeare's, 334 
Julius Ccesar ; 127 n ; plot drawn 
from Plutarch, 211; date of pro- 
duction, 211; a play of the same 
title acted in 1594, 211; general 
features of the play, 21 1, 212 ; Jon- 
son's hostile criticism, 220 n. 'For 
editions see Section xix. (Bibli- 
ography), 301-25 



Kean, Edmund, 338, 351 

Keller, A., German translation of 

Shakespeare by, 344 
Kemble, Charles, 351 
Kemble, John Philip, 337 
Kemp, William, comedian, 43, 208, 

219 
Kenilworth, 17; cf. 162 
Ketzcher, N., translation into Russian 

by. 353 

Killigrew, Thomas, 334 

King's players, the company of, 35 ; 
Shakespeare one of its members, 
36; the poet's plays performed 



LAW 

almost exclusively by, 36, 40 and 
n 1 ; King James's license to, 230, 
231 

Kirkland, occurrence of the name ol 
Shakespeare at, 1 

Kirkman, Francis, publisher, 181 

Knight, Charies, 324 

Knollys, Sir William, 415 n 

Kok, A. S., translation in Dutch by, 
352 

Korner, J., German translation of 
Shakespeare by, 345 

Kraszewski, Polish translation edited 
by, 353 

Kreyssig, Friedrich A. T., studies of 
the poet by, 345 

Kyd, Thomas, influence on Shake- 
speare, 61 ; alleged author of Titus 
Andronicus, 65 ; his Spanish Trag- 
edy, 65, 221 ; dramatises story of 
Hamlet, 221 and n ; Shakespeare's 
acquaintance with his work, 222 n 



L., H., initials on seal attesting 
Shakespeare's autograph. See 
Lawrence, Henry 

La Giuletta, Luigi da Porto's, 55 n 1 

La Harpe, sides with Voltaire in 
the Shakespearean controversy in 
France, 349 

Labe, Louise, 445 n 

Lamb, Charles, 260, 338 

Lambarde, William, 175 

Lambert, Edmund, mortgagee of the 
Asbies property, 12, 26, 164 

Lambert, John, and the Asbies prop- 
erty, 26; John Shakespeare's law- 
suit with, 195 

Lane, Nicholas, a creditor of John 
Shakespeare, 186 

Langbaine, Gerard, 66, 362 

Laroche, Benjamin, translation by, 

35o 
Latin, the poet's acquaintance with, 

13. 15. I0 

' Latten,' use of the word in Shake- 
speare, 177 n 

' Laura,' Shakespeare's allusion to 
her as Petrarch's heroine, 108 ; title 
of Tofte's collection of sonnets, 

438 
Law, the poet's knowledge of, 32 and 
cf. n 2, and 107 



462 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



LAWRENCE 

Lawrence, Henry, his seal beneath 
Shakespeare's autograph, 267 

Lear, King: date of composition, 
241; produced at Whitehall, 241; 
Butter's imperfect editions, 241 ; 
mainly founded on Hoiinshed's 
'Chronicle,' 241, and Sidney's 
'Arcadia,' 241 ; the character of 
the King, 242. For editions see 
Section xix. (Bibliography) 301- 

25 
Legal terminology in plays and 

poems of the Shakespearean 

period, 32 n 2, and Appendix IX. ; 

cf. 107 
Legge, Dr. Thomas, a Latin piece 

on Richard III by, 63 
Leicester, Earl of, entertains Queen 

Elizabeth at Kenilworth, 17, 162; 

in the Low Countries, 30; his 

company of plavers, 33, 35 
Leo, F. A., 346 
Leoni, Michele, Italian translation 

of the poet issued by, 352 
' Leopold ' Shakespeare, the, 325 
Lessing, defence of Shakespeare by, 

343 
L' Estrange, Sir Nicholas, 176 
Le Tourneur, Pierre, French prose 
translation of Shakespeare by, 349 
' Licia,' Fletcher's collection of son- 
nets called, 77 n 2, 103, 105, 1 13 n 5, 

433 
Linche, Richard, his sonnets entitled 

' Diella,' 437 
Lintot, Bernard, 231 
Litigation, Shakespeare's liking for, 

206 
Locke (or Lok), Henry, sonnets by, 

33 8 .44i 

1 Locrine, Tragedie of,' 179 

Lodge, Thomas, 57, 61 ; his ' Scillas 
Metamorphosis' and 'Venus and 
Adonis,' 75 and n 2; his plagia- 
risms, 103 and n 3, 433 ; his ' Rosa- 
lynde,' 209; his ' Phillis,' 417, 433 

London Prodigall, 180, 313 

Lope de Vega dramatises the story 
of Romeo and Juliet, 55 n 1 

Lopez, Roderigo,*68 and n 

Lorkin, Rev. Thomas, on the burning 
of the Globe Theatre, 261 ?z 

Love, treatment of, in Shakespeare's 
sonnets, 97 and n, 98, 112, 113 and 



MACBETH 

n 2; in the sonnets of other writers, 
104-6, 113 11 2 
' Lover ' and ' love ' synonyms with 
'friend' and 'friendship' in Eliza- 
bethan English, 127 n 
'Lover's Complaint, A,' possibly by 

Shakespeare, 91. 
Love's Labour's Lost : Latin phrases 
in, 15 ; probably the poet's first 
dramatic production, 50; its plot 
not borrowed, 51 and n, 52 ; its re- 
vision in 1397, 52 ; date of publica- 
tion, 52 ; influence ot Lyly, 62 ; 
performed at Whitehall, 81; son- 
nets in, 84, 107; the praise of 
'blackness,' 118, 119 and « 2; per- 
formed at Southampton's house in 
the Strand, 384. For editions see 
Section xix. ( Bibliography), 301-25 

j Love's Labour's Won, attributed by 
Meres to Shakespeare, 162. See 
All's Well 
' Love's Martyr, or Rosalin's Com- 
plaint,' 183, 184 n, 304 

I Lowell, James Russell, 13 n, 341 

i Lucian, the Timon of, 243 

j ' Lucrece ' : published in 1594, 76, 
77 n 1, n 2; dedicated to the Earl 
of Southampton, 77,78, 126, 127; 
enthusiastic reception of, 78, 79; 
quarto editions, 299, 300 
Lucy, Sir Thomas, 27, 28 ; carica- 
tured in Justice Shallow, 29, 173 

j Luddington, 20 
Lydgate, ' Troy Book ' of, 227 

I Lyly, John, 61 ; influence on Shake- 
speare's comedies, 61, 62 ; his 
addresses to Cupid, 97 n ; and 
Midsummer Night's Dream, 162 
Lyrics in Shakespeare's plays, 207, 
250, 255 and n 2 

; 'M., I. ,'306. See also ' S., I. M.' 
\ Macbeth: the references to the climate 
of Inverness, 41 (and quotation in 
»3),42; date of composition, 239 ; 
the story drawn from Holinshed, 
239; not printed until 1623, 239; 
the shortest of the poet's plays, 
239 ; points of difference from 
other plays of the same class, 240; 
Middleton's plagiarisms of, 240. 
For editions see Section xix. (Bib- 
liography), 301-25 



INDEX 



463 



MACBETH 

Macbeth, Lady, resemblance between 
Clytemnestra of ^Eschylus and, 
13 n 

Mackay, Mr. Herbert, on the dower 
of the poet's widow, 274 n 

Macklin, Charles, 336, 337 

Macready, William Charles, 339, 

351 
Madden, Rt. Hon. D. H., 27 n, 168, 

364 

Magellan, 'Voyage to the South 
Pole ' by, 253 

Magny, Olivier de, 443 

Malone, Edmund, on Shakespeare's 
first employment in the theatre, 34 ; 
on the poet's residence, 38 ; on the 
date of The Tempest, 254, 332, 333 ; 
his writings, 321, 322, 362 

Malvolio, popularity of, 211 

Manners, Lady Bridget, 378, 379 
and n 

Manmngham, John (diarist), 210 

Manuscript, circulation of sonnets 
in, 88 and n, 391, 396 

Marino, vituperative sonnet by, 122 
n 1, 443 

Markham, Gervase, his adulation of 
Southampton, 131, 134, 387 

Marlowe, Christopher, 57; his share 
in the revision of Henry VI, 60; 
his influence on Shakespeare, 61, 
63, 64 ; Shakespeare's notices of, in 
As You Like It, 64; his 'First 
Book of Lucan," 90, 393, 399 

Marmontel sides with Voltaire in 
the Shakespearean controversy in 
France, 349 

Marot, Clement, 442 

Marriage, treatment of, in the Son- 
nets, 98 

Marshall, Mr. F. A., 325 

Marston, John, identified by some 
as the 'rival poet,' 136, 183; his 
quarrel with Jonson, 214-20 

Martin, an English actor in Scotland, 
41 and n 1 

Martin, Lady, 339, 365 

' Mary Magdalene's Funeral Tears,' 
88 n 

Masks worn by men playing women's 
parts, 38 n 2 

Massinger, Philip, 258 ; portions of 
The Two Noble Kinsmen as- 
signed to, 259; the conjecture that 



he collaborated with Fletcher in 
Henry VIII, 263 and n 2 

' Mastic,' use of the word, 228 n 

Masuccio, the story of Romeo and 
Juliet in his Novellino, 55 

Matthew, Sir Toby, 371, 383 

Mayne, Jasper, 306, 328 n 

Measure for Measure : the offence of 
Claudio, 23 n\ date of composi- 
tion, 235; produced at Whitehall, 
235 ; source of plot, 236 ; devia- 
tions from the old story, 237, 238 ; 
the argument, 238 ; references to 
a ruler's dislike of mobs, 238. For 
editions see Section xix. (Bibliog- 
raphy), 301-25 

Melin de Saint-Gelais, 442 

Memorials in sculpture to the poet, 
297 

Mencechmi of Plautus, 54 

Mendelssohn, setting of Shakespea- 
rean songs by, 347 

Merchant of Venice : the influence 
of Marlowe, 63, 68 ; sources of 
the plot, 66, 67 ; the last act, 69 ; 
date of, 69; use of the word 'lover,' 
127 n. For editions see Section 
xix. (Bibliography), 301-25 

Meres, Francis, on Shakespeare's 
' sugred ' sonnets, 89 ; his quota- 
tions from Horace and Ovid, 
116 n\ attributes Loves Labour's 
Won to Shakespeare, 162 ; on the 
poet's literary reputation, 178, 179, 

390 

Mermaid Tavern, 177, 178 

Merry Devill of Edmonton, 181, 258 
n 2 

Merry Wives of Windsor, 15 ; Sir 
Thomas Lucy caricatured in Jus- 
tice Shallow, 29 ; lines from Mar- 
lowe sung by Sir Hugh Evans, 64, 
65 ; period of production, 171 ; 
publication of the play, 172; the 
plot, 172; chief characteristics, 
173. For editions see Section xix. 
(Bibliography), 301-25 

Metre of Shakespeare's plays, 48- 

50 
Metre of Shakespeare's poems, 75- 

77 
Metre of Shakespeare's sonnets, 95 

and n 2 
Mezieres, Alfred, 350 



464 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



MICHEL 

Michel, Francisque, translation by, 

350 

Middle Temple Hall, performance 
of Twelfth Night at, 210 

Middleton, Thomas, his allusion to 
Le Motte in Blurt, Master Con- 
stable, 51 n; his plagiarisms of 
Macbeth in The Witch, 240 

Midsummer Night's Dreatn : refer- 
ences to the pageants at Kenilworth 
Park, 17, 162; references to Spen- 
ser's ' Teares of the Muses,' 80 ; 
date of production, 161 ; sources 
of the story, 162; the scheme of 
the play, 162. For editions see 
Section xix. (Bibliography), 301- 

25 
Milton, 179 n ; his epitaph on Shake- 
speare, 327 
Minto, Professor, on Chapman as 

Shakespeare's ' rival ' poet, 135 n 
Miranda, character of, 256 
' Mirror of Martyrs,' 211 
Miseries of Enforced Marriage, 243 
' Monarcho, Fantasticall,' 51 n 
Money, its purchasing power in the 

sixteenth century, 3 n 3, 197 n 
Montagu, Mrs. Elizabeth, 348 
Montaigne, ' Essays' of, 84 n, 253 
Montegut, Emile, translation by, 350 
Montemayor, George de, 53 
Montgomery, Philip Herbert, Earl 

of, 306, 381, 410 
Monument to Shakespeare in Strat- 
ford Church, 276, 286 
Morley, Lord, 140 n 
Mortgage-deed signed by the poet, 

267 
Moseley, Humphrey, publisher, 181, 

258, 259 
Mothe, in Loves Labour s Lost, 51 n 
Moulton, Dr. Richard G., 365 
Mucedorus, wrongly assigned to 

Shakespeare, 72 
Much Ado about Nothing : a jesting 
allusion to sonnetteenng, 108 ; its 
publication, 207, 208 ; date of, 208 ; 
the comic characters, 208 ; Italian 
origin of Hero and Claudio, 208 ; 
parts taken by William Kemp and 
Cowley, 208 ; quotation from the 
Spanish Tragedy, 221 n. For edi- 
tions see Section xix. (Bibliogra- 
phy), 301-25 



OECHELHAEUSER 

Mulberry-tree at New Place, the, 
194 and n 

Music : at stage performances in 
Shakespeare's day, 38 n 2; its 
indebtedness to the poet, 340 



Nash, Anthony, the poet's legacy to, 
276 

Nash, John, the poet's legacy to, 276 

Nash, Thomas, (1) marries Elizabeth 
Hall, Shakespeare's granddaugh- 
ter, 282 

Nash, Thomas, (2) on the perform- 
ance of Henry VI, 56, 57 ; his 
'Terrors of the Night,' 88 n; on 
the immortalising power of verse, 
114 ; use of the word ' lover,' 127 n ; 
his appeals to Southampton, 131, 
134, 135 n, 385, 386; on Kyd's 
'Hamlets,' 221 n, 427 n 2; his 
preface to ' Astrophel and Stella,' 
429 11 1 

Navarre, King of, in Love's Labour's 
Lost, 51 n 

Neil, Samuel, 364 

Nekrasow and Gerbel, translation 
into Russian by, 353 

New Place, Stratford, Shakespeare's 
purchase of, 193, 194; entertain- 
ment of Jonson and Drayton at, 
271 ; the poet's death at, 272 ; sold 
to Sir Edward Walker, 283; dem- 
olition of, 283 

Newcastle, Margaret Cavendish, 
Duchess of, criticism of the poet 
by, 331 

Newdegate, Lady, 406 n, 415 

Newington Butts Theatre, 37 

Newman, Thomas, piratical publica- 
tion of Sir Philip Sidney's sonnets 
by, 88 n, 429 and n 1 

Nicolson, George, English agent in 
Scotland, 41 n 1 

Nottingham, Earl of, his company of 
players, 225 ; taken into the patron- 
age of Henry, Prince of Wales, 
231 n 



Oberon, vision of, 17, 161; in ' Huon 

of Bordeaux,' 162 
Oechelhaeuser, W., acting edition of 

the poet by, 346 



INDEX 



465 



OLDCASTLE 

Oldcastle, Sir John, versions of his 
history, 170, 313 

' Oldcastle, Sir John,' the original 
name of Falstaff in Hefiry IV, 
169 

Oldys, William, 231, 362 

Olney, Henry, publisher, 437 

Orlando Fur 10 so, 47 n, 208 

Ortlepp, E., German translation of 
Shakespeare by, 344 

Othello : date of composition, 235 ; 
not printed in the poet's lifetime, 
235 ; plot drawn from Cinthio's 
' Hecatommithi,' 236; new char- 
acters and features, 236. For 
editions see Section xix. (Bibliog- 
raphy), 301-25 

Ovid, influence on Shakespeare of 
his ' Metamorphoses,' 15, 75 and 
n 1, 76, 162, 253; claims immor- 
tality for his verse, 114 and n i, 
116 n ; the poet's signature said to 
be on the title-page of a copy of 
the ' Metamorphoses ' in the Bod- 
leian Library, 15 

Oxford, the poet's visits to, 31, 265, 
266 ; Hamlet acted at, 224 

Oxford, Earl of, his company of 
actors, 35 

' Oxford ' edition of Shakespeare, 
the, 325 



Painter, William, his ' Palace of 
Pleasure ' and ' Romeo and Juliet,' 
55; All's Well that Ends Well, 
163 ; Timon of Athens, 243 ; and 
Coriolanus, 246 

Palcemon and Arcyte, a lost play, 260 

Palamon and Arsett, a lost play, 260 

Palladis Tatnia, eulogy on the poet 
in, 178 

Palmer, John, actor, 337 

' Pandora,' Soothern's collection of 
love-sonnets, 138 n 23 

Pandosto (afterwards called Dorastus 
and Fawnia), Shakespeare's in- 
debtedness to, 251 

Parodies on sonnetteering, 106-8, 
122 and n 

Parthenophil and Parthenophe, the, 
of Barnes, 132 

Pasquier, Estienne, 443 

Passerat, Jean, 443 



PERKES 

Passionate Centurie of Love, Wat. 
son's, 77; plagiarism in, 101 n 4, 
102, 427 n 2, 428 

' Passionate Pilgrim,' piratical inser- 
tion of two sonnets in, 98, 182, 437; 
the remaining contents of, 182 n, 
299; printed with Shakespeare's 
poems, 300 

Patrons and companies of players, 
35 ; adulation offered to, 138 and 
n 2, 140, 141, 440 and n 

Pavier, Thomas, printer, 180 

' Pecorone, II,' by Ser Giovanni 
Fiorentino, 14, 66 and n 3, 172; 
W. G. Waters's translation of, 
66 n 3 

Peele, George, 57; his share in the 
original draft of Henry VI, 60 

Pembroke, Countess of, dedication 
of Daniel's 'Delia' to, 130, 429; 
homage paid to, by Nicholas 
Breton, 138 n 2 

Pembroke, William, third Earl of, 
the question of the identification of 
' Mr. W. H.' with, 94, 406-15 ; per- 
formance at his Wilton residence, 
231, 232 n 1, 411; the First Folio, 
306; his alleged relations with 
Shakespeare, 23 n, 411-15; dedi- 
cations by Thorpe to, 399 and n 1, 
403 n 2 

Pembroke, Henry, second Earl of, 
his company of players perform 
Henry VI (pt. iii.), 36, 59: and 
Titus Andronicus, 66 

Penrith, Shakespeares at, 1 

Pepys, his criticisms of The Tempest 
and Midsummer Night's Dream 

329 

Percy, William, his sonnets, entitled 
' Ccelia,' 435 

Perez, Antonio, and Antonio in The 
Merchant of Venice, 68 n 

Pericles : date of composition, 242 ; 
a work of collaboration, 242 ; lack 
of homogeneity, 244 ; dates of the 
various editions, 244 ; not included 
in the First Folio, 305; included 
in Third Folio, 313. For editions 
see Section xix. (Bibliography), 
301-25 

Perkes (Clement), in Henry IV, 
the name of a family at Stinch- 
combe Hill, 168 



466 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



' Perkins Folio,' forgeries in the, 312, 
317 n 2 (Appendix), 367 and n 

Personalities on the stage, 215 n 1 

Peruse, Jean de la, 443 

Petowe, Henry, elegy on Queen 
Elizabeth by, 148 

Petrarch, emulated by Elizabethan 
sonnetteers, 84, 85, 86 n ; feigns 
old age in his sonnets, 86 n; his 
metre, 95 ; Spenser's translations 
from, 101 ; imitation of his son- 
nets justified by Gabriel Harvey, 
101 n 4 ; plagiarisms admitted by 
sonnetteers, 101 n 4; Wyatt's 
translations of, 101 tz 4, 427 ; plagi- 
arised indirectly by Shakespeare, 
no, in and n, 113 n 1 ; the melan- 
choly of his sonnets, 152 n ; imi- 
tated in France, 443 

Phelps, Samuel, 325, 339 

Phillips, Augustine, actor, friend of 
Shakespeare, 36 ; induced to re- 
vive Richard II at the Globe in 
1601, 175; his death, 264 

Phillips, Edward (Milton's nephew), 
362, 439 n 1 

' Phillis,' Lodge's 118 n 2, 433 and 

"3 
Philosophy, Chapman's sonnets in 

praise of, 441 
' Phoenix and the Turtle, The,' 183, 

184, 304 
Pichot, A., 350 
' Pierces Supererogation,' by Gabriel 

Harvey, 101 n 4, 105 
Pindar, his claim for the immortality 

of verse, 114 and n 1 
Plague, the, in Stratford-on-Avon, 

10; in London, 65, 231 
Plautus, the plot of the Comedy of 

Errors drawn from, 16 ; transla- 
tion of, 54 
Plays, sale of, 47 and n ; revision of, 

47 ; their publication deprecated 

by playhouse authorities, 48 n ; 

only a small proportion printed, 

48 n ; prices paid for, 202 n 
' Pleiade, La,' title of the literary 

comrades of Ronsard, 442 ; list of, 

443 

' Plutarch,' North's translation of, 
Shakespeare's indebtedness to, 47, 
162, 211, 243, 245 and n, 246 and n 

Poaching episode, the, 27, 28 



QUEEN'S 

Poetaster, Jonson's, 217, 218 and n 

Poland, translations and perform- 
ances of Shakespeare in, 353 

Pontoux, Claude de, name of his 
heroine copied by Drayton, 104 

Pope, Alexander, 297 ; edition of 
Shakespeare by, 315 

Porto, Luigi da, adapts the story of 
Romeo and Juliet, 55 n 1 

Portraits of the poet, 286-93, 2 9& 
n 2 ; the ' Stratford ' portrait, 287 ; 
Droeshout's engraving, 287, 288, 
300, 306; the 'Droeshout' paint- 
ing, 288-91 ; portrait in the Clar- 
endon gallery, 291 ; ' Ely House ' 
portrait, 290, 291 ; ' Chandos ' por- 
trait, 292, 293 ; ' Jansen ' portrait, 
293, 294 ; ' Felton ' and ' Soest ' 
portraits, 294 ; miniatures, 295 

Pott, Mrs. Henry, 372 

Prevost, Abbe, 348 

Pritchard, Mrs., 336 

Procter, Bryan Waller (Barry Corn- 
wall), 324 

Promos a?id Cassandra, 237 

Prospero, character of, 257 

Publication of dramas : deprecated 
by playhouse authorities, 48 11 ; 
only a small proportion of the 
dramas of the period printed, 48 n ; 
only sixteen of Shakespeare's plays 
published in his lifetime, 48 

Punning, 418, 419 n 

Puritalne, or the Widdow of Wat- 
ling-streete, The, 180, 313 

Puritanism, alleged prevalence in 
Stratford-on-Avon of, 10 n, 268 
n 2 ; its hostility to dramatic repre- 
sentations, 10 n, 212, 213 n 1 ; the 
poet's references to, 268 n 1 

' Pyramus and Thisbe,' 397 



QUARLES, John, ' Banishment of 
Tarquin ' of, 300 

Quarto editions of the plays, in the 
poet's lifetime, 30,1, 302; posthu- 
mous, 302, 303 

of the poems in the poet's 

lifetime, 299; posthumous, 300 

' Quatorzain,' term applied to the 
Sonnet, 427 ?i 2 ; cf. 429 n 1 

' Queen's Children of the Chapel,' 
the - 34. 35. 3 8 - 213-17 



INDEX 



467 



QUEEN'S 

Queen's Company of Actors, at 
Stratford-on-Avon, 10; its return 
to London, 33, 35, 231 n 

Quiney, Thomas, marries Judith 
Shakespeare, 271; his residence 
in Stratford, 280; his children, 281 

Quinton, 165 



RALEGH, Sir Walter, extravagant 
apostrophe to Queen Elizabeth by, 
137 n 1, 182 n 

Rapp, M., German translation of 
Shakespeare by, 344 

' Ratseis Ghost,' and Ratsey's ad- 
dress to the players, 185, 199 

Ravenscroft, Edward, on Titus An- 
dronicus, 65, 332 

Reed, Isaac, 321, 322 

Reformation, the, at Stratford-on- 
Avon, 10 n 

Rehan, Miss Ada, 342 

Religion and Philosophy, sonnets on 
(Appendix IX.), 440, 441 

Return from Parnassus, The, 198, 
199 n 1, 218-20, 277 

Revision of plays, the poet's, 47, 48 

Reynoldes, William, the poet's legacy 
to, 276 

Rich, Barnabe, story of ' Apollonius 
and Silla ' by, 53, 210 

Rich, Penelope, Lady, Sidney's pas- 
sion for, 428 

Richard II; the influence of Mar- 
lowe, 63, 64 ; published anony- 
mously, 63; the deposition scene, 
64 ; probably composed in 1593, 
64; the facts drawn from Holin- 
shed, 64; its revival, 175, 383. For 
editions see Section xix. (Bibli- 
ography), 301-25 

Richard III : the influence of Mar- 
lowe, 63; materials drawn from 
Holinshed, 63 ; Mr. Swinburne's 
criticism, 63; Burbage's imperso- 
nation of the hero, 63 ; published 
anonymously, 63 ; Colley Cibber's 
adaptation, 335. For editions see 
Section xix. (Bibliography), 301- 

25 
Richardson, John, 20, 22 
Richmond Palace, performances at, 

82, 230 
Ristori, Madame, 352 



ROWE 
Roberts, James, printer, 225, 226, 

3°3. 43 1 

Robinson, Clement, use of the word 
' sonnet ' by, 427 ;/ 2 

Roche, Walter, master of Stratford 
Grammar School, 13 

Roles, Shakespeare's : at Greenwich 
Palace, 43, 44 n 1 ; in Every Man 
in his Humour, 44 ; in Sejanus, 44 ; 
the Ghost in Hamlet, 44; 'some 
kingly parts in sport,' 44 ; Adam 
in As You Like It, 44 

Rolfe, Mr. W. J., 325 

Romeo and Juliet, 54 ; plot drawn 
from the Italian, 55 ; date of com- 
position, 56; publication of, 56; 
two choruses in the sonnet form, 
84; allusion to sonnetteering, 108. 
For editions see Section xix. (Bib- 
liography), 301-35 

Rotneus and Juliet, Arthur Brooke's, 
322 

Ronsard, plagiarised by English son- 
netteers, 102, 103 n 3, 432 sea.; by 
Shakespeare, in, 112 and n 1 ; his 
claim for the immortality of verse, 
114 and n 1, 116 n ; his sonnets of 
vituperation, 121 ; gave the sonnet 
a literary vogue in France, 442 ; 
and ' La Pleiade,' 442; modern re- 
print of his works, 445 n 

Rosalind, played by a boy, 38 n 2 

Rosaline, praised for her ' blackness,' 
118, 119 

' Rosalynde, Euphues Golden Lega- 
cie,' Lodge's, 209 

Rose Theatre, Bankside, erected by 
Philip Henslowe, 36; opened by 
Lord Strange's company, 36; the 
scene of the poet's first successes, 
37; performance of Henry VI, 56; 
production of the Venesyon Comedy, 
69 

Rossi, representation of Shakespeare 
by, 352 

Roussillon, Countess of, 163 

Rowe, Nicholas, on the parentage of 
Shakespeare's wife, 18 ; on Shake- 
speare's poaching escapade, 27 ; 
on Shakespeare's performance as 
the Ghost in Hamlet, 44; on the 
story of Southampton's gift to 
Shakespeare, 126 ; on Queen Eliza- 
beth's enthusiasm for the character 



468 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



ROWINGTON 

of Falstaff, 171; on the poet's last 
years at Stratford, 266; on John 
Combe's epitaph, 269 n\ his 
edition of the poet's plays, 314, 362 

Rowington, Shakespeares of, 2 

Rowlands, Samuel, 397 

Rowley, William, 181, 243 

Roydon, Matthew, on Sir Philip Sid- 
ney, 140, 184 n 

Rusconi, Carlo, Italian prose version 
of Shakespeare by, 352 

Russia, Shakespeare in, 352, 353 

Rymer, Thomas, his censure of the 
poet, 329 

' S., M. I.,' tribute to the poet in the 
Second Folio thus headed, 327 and 
n, 328 

' S., W.,' initials in Willobie's book, 
I 56. 157; commonness of the 
initials, 157 n ; use of the initials 
on works fraudulently attributed to 
the poet, 179, 180 

Sackville, Thomas, 408 n 

Sadler, Hamlett, the poet's legacy to, 
276 

St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, a William 
Shakespeare in 1598 living in, 38 
and n 1 

Saint-Saens, M., opera of Henry VIII 

t>y. 351 

Sainte-Marthe, Scevole de, 443 

Salvini, representation of Othello by, 
352 

Sand, George, translation of As You 
Like It by, 351 

Sandells, Fufk, and Shakespeare's 
marriage, 20, 22 ; supervisor of 
Richard Hathaway's will, 22 

Saperton, 27, 29 

' Sapho and Phao,' address to Cupid 
in, 97 n 

Satiro-Mastix, a retort to Jonson's 
Cynthia's Revels, 215 

Savage, Mr. Richard, 363 

' Saviolo's Practise,' 209 

Scenery unknown in Shakespeare's 
- day, 38 and n 2 ; designed by Inigo 
Jones for masks in the palaces 
of James I, 38 n 2; Sir Philip Sid- 
ney and difficulties arising from its 
absence, 38 n 2 

Schiller, adaptation of Macbeth for 
the stage by, 345 



SHAKESPEARE 

Schlegel, 180; German translation of 
Shakespeare by, 343 ; lectures on 
Shakespeare by, 344 

Schmidt, Alexander, 364 

' Schoole of Abuse,' 67 

Schrceder, F. U. L., German actor of 
Shakespeare, 346 

Schubert, Franz, setting of Shake- 
spearean songs by, 347 

Schumann, setting of Shakespearean 
songs by, 347 

' Scillas Metamorphosis,' Lodge's, 75 
and n 2 

Scoloker, Anthony, his ' Daiphantus,' 
277 

Scotland : Shakespeare's alleged 
travels in, 40-42 ; visits of actors 
to, 41 n 1 

Scot, Reginald, allusion to Monarcho 
in ' The Discoverie of Witchcraft ' 
of, 51 n 

Scott, Sir Walter, at Charlecote, 28 

Scourge of Folly, 44 n 2 

Sedley, Sir Charles, apostrophe to 
the poet, 331 

Sejanus, Shakespeare takes part in 
the performance of, 44, 401 

Selimus, 179 

Serafino dell' Aquila, Watson's in- 
debtedness to, 77 n 2, 102, 103 n 1 

Seve, Maurice, 104 and n, 430, 442, 

445 * 1 

Sewell, Dr. George, 315 

'Shadow of the Night, The,' Chap- 
man's, 135 n 

Shakespeare, the surname of, 1, 2, 
cf. 24 n 

Shakespeare, Adam, 1 

Shakespeare, Ann, a sister of the 
poet, n 

Shakespeare, Anne (or Agnes) : her 
parentage, 18, 19; her marriage to 
the poet, 18, 19-22; the assumed 
identification of her with Anne 
Whateley untenable, 23, 24 and // ; 
her debt, 187; her husband's be- 
quest to her, 273 ; her widow's 
dower barred, 274 and n ; her 
wish to be buried in her husband's 
grave, 274; committed by her 
husband to the care of the elder 
daughter, 275; her death, and the 
inscription above her grave, 280 
and n 



INDEX 



469 



SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare, Edmund, a brother of 
the poet, 11 ; becomes ' a player,' 
283; death, 283 

Shakespeare, Gilbert, a brother of 
the poet, 11; sees him play the 
part of Adam in As You Like It, 
44; survived the poet and ap- 
parently had a son named Gilbert, 
283 

Shakespeare, Hamnet, son of the 
poet, 26, 187 

Shakespeare, Henry, one of the 
poet's uncles, 3, 4, 186 

Shakespeare, Joan (1), 7 [Joan 

Shakespeare, Joan (2). See Hart, 

Shakespeare, John (1), the first re- 
corded holder of this surname 
(thirteenth century), 1. 

Shakespeare, John (2), the poet's 
father, administrator of Richard 
Shakespeare's estate, 3, 4; claims 
that his grandfather received a grant 
of land from Henry VII, 2, 189 ; 
leaves Snitterfield and sets up in 
business at Stratford-on-Avon, 4; 
his property in Stratford and his 
municipal offices, 5 ; marries Mary 
Arden, 6, 7; his children, 7; his 
house in Henley Street, Stratford, 
8, 11; appointed alderman and 
bailiff, 10; welcomes actors at 
Stratford, 10; his alleged sympa- 
thies with puritanism, 10 n\ his 
application for a grant of arms, 2, 
10 n, 188-92 ; his financial diffi- 
culties, 11, 12; his younger chil- 
dren, 11 ; writ of distraint issued 
against him, 12; deprived of his 
alderman's gown, 12 ; increase of 
pecuniary difficulties, 186 ; re- 
lieved by the poet, 187 ; his death, 
204 

Shakespeare or Shakspere, John (a 
shoemaker), another resident at 
Stratford, 12 n 3. 

Shakespeare, Judith, the poet's sec- 
ond daughter, 26, 205 ; her mar- 
riage to Thomas Quiney, 271 ; her 
father's bequest to her, 275 ; her 
children, 280, 281 ; her death, 281 

Shakespeare, Margaret, 7 

Shakespeare, Mary, the poet's 
mother: her marriage, 6, 7; her 
parentage, 6, 7 ; her property, 7 ; 



SHAKESPEARE 

her title to bear the arms of the 
Arden family, 191 ; her death, 266 

Shakespeare, Richard, a brother of 
the poet, 11, 266; his death, 283 

Shakespeare, Richard, of Rowing- 
ton, 2 

Shakespeare, Richard, of Snitterfield, 
probably the poet's grandfather, 3 ; 
his family, 3, 4 ; letters of adminis- 
tration of his estate, 3 and n 3 

Shakespeare, Richard, of Wroxhall, 

3 

Shakespeare, Susannah, a daughter 
of the poet, 22. See also Hall, Mrs. 
Susannah 

Shakespeare, Thomas, probably one 
of the poet's uncles, 3, 4 

Shakespeare, William: paren- 
tage and birthplace, 1-9 ; child- 
hood, education, and marriage, 
10-24 {see also Education of Shake- 
speare ; Shakespeare, Anne or 
Agnes) ; departure from Stratford, 
27-31; theatrical employment, 32- 
4; joins the Lord Chamberlain's 
company, 36 ; his roles, 43 ; his 
first plays, 50-73 ; publication of 
' Venus and Adonis ' and ' Lucrece,' 
74, 76 seq.; his Sonnets, 83-124, 
151-6; patronage of the Earl of 
Southampton, 125-50; plays com- 
posed between 1595 and 1598, 161- 
73 ; his popularity and influence, 
176-9; returns to Stratford in 
1596, 187 ; buys New Place, 193 ; 
financial position before 1599, 196 
seq. ; financial position after 1599, 
200 seq. ; formation of his estate at 
Stratford, 204 seq. ; plays written 
between 1599 and 1609, 207-47; 
the latest plays, 248 seq. ; per- 
formance of his plays at Court, 264 
{see also Court ; Whitehall; Eliza- 
beth, Queen; James I) ; final set- 
tlement in Stratford (1611), 266 
seq. ; death (1616), 272; his will, 
273 seq.; monument at Stratford, 
276; personal character, 277-9; 
his survivors and descendants, 280 
seq.; autographs, portraits, and 
memorials, 284-98 ; bibliography, 
299-325 ; his posthumous reputa- 
tion in England and abroad, 326- 
54 ; general e-stimate of his work, 



47o 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



SHAKESPEARE 

355-7 ; biographical sources, 361- 
5 ; alleged relations with the Earl 
of Pembroke, 411-15 
Shakespeare Gallery in Pall Mall, 

34i 
' Shakespeare Society,' the, 333, 365 
Shallow, Justice, Sir Thomas Lucy 
caricatured as, 29; his house in 
Gloucestershire, 167, 168, 173 
Sheldon copy of the First Folio, the, 

309, 310 
Shelton, Thomas, translator of ' Don 

Quixote,' 258 
Shiels, Robert, compiler of ' Lives of 

the Poets,' 32 n 3 
Shottery, Anne Hathaway's Cottage 

at, 19 
Shylock, sources of the portrait, 67, 

68 and n 
Siddons, Mrs. Sarah, 337, 338 
Sidney, Sir Philip : on the absence 
of scenery in a theatre, 38 n 2 ; 
translation of verses from ' Diana,' 
53; Shakespeare's indebtedness 
to, 61 ; addressed as ' Willy ' by 
some of his eulogists, 81 ; his 
' Astrophel and Stella ' brings the 
sonnet into vogue, 83 ; piracy of 
his sonnets, 88 n, 432 ; circulation 
of manuscript copies of his 'Ar- 
cadia,' 88 n ; his addresses to 
Cupid in his 'Astrophel,' 97 n; 
warns the public against the in- 
sincerity of sonnetteers, 104; his 
allusion to the conceit of the im- 
mortalising power of verse, 114; 
his praise of 'blackness,' 119 and 
n 1 ; sonnet on ' Desire,' 153 ; use 
of the word ' will,' 417 ; 'Astrophel 
and Stella,' 428, 429; popularity of 
his works, 429 
Sidney, Sir Robert, 382 
Singer, Samuel Weller, 324 
Sly, Christopher, 164-7, 221 n 
Smethwick, John, bookseller, 304 
Smith, Richard, publisher, 431 
Smith, Wentworth, 157 ?i ; plays pro- 
duced by, 180 n; the question of 
his initials on six plays attributed 
to Shakespeare, 180 n 
Smith, William, sonnets of, 138 n 2, 

157 n, 390, 437 
Smith, Mr. W. H., and the Baconian 
hypothesis, 372 



SONNETS 

Smithson, Miss, actress, 351 

Snitterfield : Richard Shakespeare 
rents land of Robert Arden there, 
3, 6; departure of John Shake- 
speare, the poet's father, from, 4; 
the Arden property at, 7 ; sale of 
Mary Shakespeare's property at, 
12 and n 1, 186 

Snodham, Thomas, printer, 180 

Somers, Sir George, wrecked off the 
Bermudas, 252 

Somerset House, Shakespeare and 
his company summoned to, 233 
and ;/ 2 

Sonnet in France (1550-1600), the 
bibliographical note on, 442-5 

Sonnets, Shakespeare's : the poet's 
first attempts, 84 ; the majority 
probably composed in 1594, 85 ; a 
few written between 1594 and 1603 
[e.g. cvii.) ; their literary value, 87, 
88 ; circulation in manuscript, 88, 
396; his ' sugred ' sonnets com- 
mended by Meres, 89; their 
piratical publication in 1609, 89- 
94, 390; their form, 95, 96; want 
of continuity, 96, 100; usually 
divided into two 'groups,' 96, 97; 
main topics of the first ' group,' 98, 
99; main topics of second 'group,' 
99, 100 ; rearrangement in the edi- 
tion of 1640, 100 ; autobiographical 
only in a limited sense, 100, 109, 
125, 152, 160; censure of them by 
Sir John Davies, 107; the bor- 
rowed conceits of, 109-24; in- 
debtedness to Drayton, Petrarch, 
Ronsard, De Baif, Desportes, and 
others, 1 10-12; the poet's claim 
of immortality for his sonnets, 
1 13-16, cf. 114 n 1; the 'Will 
Sonnets,' 117, 420-4; praise of 
' blackness,' 118 ; vituperation, 
120-4 ; ' dedicatory ' sonnets, 125 
seq. ; the ' rival poet ' of, 130-6 ; 
sonnets of friendship, 136, 138-47; 
the supposed story of intrigue in, 
153-8 ; summary of conclusions 
respecting, 158-60; edition of 
1640, 300 

Sonnets quoted with explanatory 
comments: xx.,93«; xxvi., 128 n\ 
xxxii., 128, 129 n; xxxvii., 130; 
xxxviii., 129; xxxix., 130; xlvi.- 



INDEX 



471 



xlvii., 112, 113 n 1; lv., 115, 116; \ 
lxxiv., 130; lxxviii., 125; lxxx., 134; 
lxxxv., 133; lxxxvi., 132; lxxxviii., 
133 ; lxxxix., 133 ; xciv. 1. 14, 72, 
89; c, I26;cvii., 13 n, 87, 147, 
149,380; cviii., 130; ex., 44, 130; 
cxi., 45 ; cxix., 152 and n ; exxiv., 
425 ; exxvi., 97 and n ; exxvii., 
118; exxix., 152, 153 and n 1; 
exxxii., 118; exxxv.-exxxvi., 420- 
4; exxxviii., 89; cxliii., 93 71, 425, 
426 and 71 ; cxliv., 89, 153, 301 ; 
cliii.-cliv., 113 and n 2 

— the vogue of the Elizabethan : 
English sonnetteering inaugurated 
by Wyatt and Surrey, 83, 427, 
428 ; followed by Thomas Wat- 
son, 83, 428 ; Sidney's ' Astrophel 
and Stella,' 83, 428, 429 and n ; 
poets celebrate patrons' virtues 
in sonnets, 84; conventional de- 
vice of sonnetteers of feigning old 
a S e > 8 5 ( an d examples in 86 n) ; 
lack of genuine sentiment, roo; 
French and Italian models, 101 
and n 1, 102-5 ! translations from 
Du Bellay, Desportes, and Pe- 
trarch, 101 and n 4, 102, 103 ; 
admissions of insincerity, 105 ; 
censure of false sentiment in son- 
nets, 106; Shakespeare's scornful 
allusion to sonnets in his plays, 
107, 108 ; vituperative sonnets, 
120-4 ; the word ' sonnet ' often 
used for ' song ' or ' poem,' 427 n 2 ; 
I. Collected sonnets of feigned 
love, 1591-7, 429-40; II. Sonnets 
to patrons, 440 ; III. Sonnets on 
philosophy and religion, 440, 441 ; 
number of sonnets published be- 
tween 1591 and 1597, 439-41 ; 
poems in other stanzas belonging 
to the sonnet category, 438 n 2 

Soothern, John, sonnets to the Earl 
of Oxford, 138 71 2 

Sophocles, parallelisms with the 
works of Shakespeare, 13 ?^ 

Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, 
third Earl of, 53; the dedications 
to him of ' Venus and Adonis ' 
and ' Lucrece,' 74, 77 ; his pat- 
ronage of Florio, 84 n ; his pat- 
ronage of Shakespeare, 126-50 ; 
his gift to the poet, 126, 200; his 



STAGE 

youthful appearance, 143 ; his 
identity with the youth of Shake- 
speare's sonnets of 'friendship' 
evidence of his portraits, 144 and 
n, 145, 146; imprisonment, 146, 
147, 380; his long hair, 146 n 2; 
his beauty, 377 ; his youthful ca- 
reer, 374-81 ; as a literary patron, 
382-9 

Southwell, Robert, circulation of 
incorrect copies of ' Mary Mag- 
dalene's Tears ' by, 88 71 ; publi- 
cation of ' A Foure-fold Medita- 
tion ' by, 92, 397, 400 and 71, 401 n 

Southwell, Father Thomas, 371 

Spanish, translation of Shakespeare's 
plays into, 354 

Sfa7iish Tragedy, Kyd's popularity 
of, 65, 221 ; quoted in the Ta77iing 
of The Shrew, 221 71 

Spedding, James, 263 

Spelling of the poet's name, 284-6 

Spenser : his description of Shake- 
speare in ' Colin Clouts come 
home againe,' 79 ; Shakespeare's 
reference to Spenser's work in 
Midsii77i77ier Night's Drea.771, 80 ; 
Spenser's allusion to ' our pleasant 
Willy ' not a reference to the poet, 
80 (and quotatio7i n) ; his descrip- 
tion of the 'gentle spirit' not a de- 
scription of Shakespeare, 81 and 
71 2 ; translation of sonnets from 
Du Bellay and Petrarch, 101 ; 
called by Gabriel Harvey ' an 
English Petrarch,' 101 and 71 4; 
on the immortalising power of 
verse, 115; his apostrophe to 
Admiral Lord Charles Howard, 
140; his 'Amoretti,' 115, 435 and 
n 5, 436 ; dedication of his ' Faerie 
Queen,' 398 

' Spirituall Sonnettes to the honour 
of God and Hys Saynts ' by Con- 
stable, 440 

Sport, Shakespeare's knowledge of, 
26, 27 and 7i, 173 

Stael, Madame de, 349 

Stafford, Lord, his company of 
actors, 33 

Stage, conditions of, in Shake- 
speare's day : absence of scenery 
and scenic costume, 38 and 71 2; 
the performance of female parts 



472 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



STANHOPE 

by men or boys, 38 and n 2 ; the 
curtain and balcony of the stage, 
38 n 2 

Stanhope of Harrington, Lord, 234 » 

' Staple of News, The,' Jonson's quo- 
tation from "Julius Ccesar in, 220 n 

Staunton, Howard, 311 ; his edition 
of the poet, 323, 324 

Steele, Richard, on Betterton's ren- 
dering of Othello, 334 

Steevens, George: his edition of 
Shakespeare, 320; his revision of 
Johnson's edition, 320, 321 ; his 
criticisms, 320, 321 

Stinchcombe Hill referred to as ' The 
Hill" in Henry IV, 168 

Stopes, Mrs. C. C, 363 

Strange, Lord. See Derby, Earl of 

Straparola, ' Notti ' of, and the 
Merry Wives of Windsor, 172 

Stratford-on-Avon, settlement of 
John Shakespeare, the poet's 
father, at, 4; property owned by 
John Shakespeare in, 5, 8; ques- 
tion of the poet's birthplace at, 8, 
9 ; the Shakespeare Museum at, 8, 
297 ; prevalence of the plague in 
1564 at, 10 ; actors entertained for 
the first time at, 10; defacement 
of images, 10 n ; the Shoemaker's 
Company and its Master, 12 n 3 ; 
the grammar school, 13; Shake- 
speare's departure from, 27, 29, 
31 ; allusions in the Taming of The 
Shrew to, 164 ; the poet's return 
in 1596 to, 187 ; appeals from 
townsmen to the poet for aid, 195, 
196; the poet's purchase of land 
at, 203, 204-6 ; the poet's last years 
at, 264, 266; attempt to enclose 
common lands at, 269, 270; the 
poet's death and burial at, 272; 
Shakespeare memorial building at, 
298; the 'Jubilee' and the ter- 
centenary, 334; topographical ac- 
counts of, 363 

Suckling, Sir John, 328 

'Sugred,' an epithet applied to the 
poet's work, 179 and n, 390 

Sully, M. Mounet-, 351 and n 1 

Sumarakow, translation into Russian 

b y. 352 

' Supposes,' the, of George Gascoigne, 
164 



TEMPEST 

Surrey, Earl of, sonnet of, 83, 95, 
101 n 4, 427, 428 

Sussex, Earl of, his company of 
actors, 35 ; Titus Andronicus per- 
formed by, 36, 66 

Swedish, translations of Shakespeare 
in, 354 

Swinburne, Mr. A. C., 63, 71, 72 n, 
333. 36S 

Sylvester, Joshua, sonnets to patrons 
by, 388, 440 and n 



Taille, Jean de la, 445 n 

Tamburlaine, Marlowe's, 63 

Taming of A Shrew, 163 

Taming of The Shrew: probable 
period of production, 163 ; identi- 
cal with Love's Labour's Won, 163 ; 
the sources, 163, 164 ; biographical 
bearing of the Induction, 164; 
quotation from the Spanish Trag- 
edy, 221 n. For editions see Section 
xix. (Bibliography), 301-25 

Tarleton, Richard, 81 ; his ' Newes 
out of Purgatorie ' and the Merry 
Wives of Windsor, 172 

Tasso, similarity of sentiment with 
that of Shakespeare's sonnets, 
152 n 

' Teares of Fancie,' Watson's, 428, 

433 
' Teares of the Isle of Wight,' volume 
of poems eulogising Southampton, 

389 

' Teares of the Muses,' Spenser's, re- 
ferred to in Midsummer Night's 
Dream, 80 

Tempest, The : traces of the influence 
of Ovid, 15; allusion to Prospero 
embarking on a ship at the gates 
of Milan, 43; the shipwreck akin 
to a similar scene in Pericles, 244 ; 
probably the latest drama com- 
pleted by the poet, 251 ; books of 
travel drawn upon, 253 ; the source 
for the complete plot not discov- 
ered, 253 ; suggestion of Tieck that 
it was written as a mask for the 
marriage of Princess Elizabeth, 
254; performed at the Princess's 
nuptial festivities, 254 ; the date of 
composition, 254 and n; its per- 
formance at Whitehall in 1611, 



INDEX 



473 



TEMPLE 

254 n ; its lyrics, 255 and n 2 ; Ben 
Jonson's scornful allusion to, 256; 
reflects the poet's highest imagina- 
tive powers, 256 ; speculative theo- 
ries about, 256, 257. For editions see 
Section xix. (Bibliography), 301-25 

Temple Grafton, 23, 24 and n 

' Temple Shakespeare, The,' 325 

Tercentenary festival, the Shake- 
speare, 334 

' Terrors ot the Night,' piracy of, 
88 n ; nocturnal habits of ' famil- 
iars ' described in, 135 n 

Terry, Miss Ellen, 339 

Theatre, The, in Shoreditch, one of 
the only two theatres existing in 
London at the period of Shake- 
speare's arrival, 32; owned by 
James Burbage, 33, 36; the scene 
of some of Shakespeare's per- 
formances between 1595 and 1599, 
37; demolished by Richard Bur- 
bage and his brother Cuthbert, 
and the Globe Theatre built with 
the materials, 37 

Theatres in London : Blackfriars 
{q.v.) ; Curtain {q.v.); Duke's, 
295 ; Fortune, 212, 233 n 1 : Globe 
{q.v.) ; Newington Butts, 37 ; Red 
Bull, 31 n 2; Rose {q.v.) ; Swan, 
38 n 2; The Theatre, in Shore- 
ditch {q.v.) 

Theobald, Lewis : his version of Ham- 
let in ' Shakespeare Restored,' 224 ; 
allusion to an unfinished draft of 
a play by Shakespeare, 259 ; his 
criticism of Pope in ' Shakespeare 
Restored,' 316; his edition of the 
poet's works, 316, 317 

Thomas, Ambroise, opera of Hamlet 

by, 351 

Thorns, W. J., 363 

Thornbury, G. W., 363 

Thorpe, Thomas, the piratical pub- 
lisher of Shakespeare's Sonnets, 
89-95; Marlowe's translation of 
the ' First Book of Lucan ' his first 
piratical work, 90, 135 n ; adds ' A 
Lover's Complaint' to the collec- 
tion of Sonnets, 91 ; his bombastic 
dedication and his mention of ' Mr. 
W. H.,' 92-5 ; the true history of 
'Mr. W. H,' and (Appendix v.), 
390-405 



I Three Ladies of London, The, some 
of the scenes in the Merchant of 
Ve7iice anticipated in, 67 

Thyard, Ponthus de, a member of 
' La Pleiade,' 443, 444 

Tieck, Ludwig, theory respecting 
The Tempest of, 254, 333, 344 

Tilney, Edmund, master of the revels, 
233 ?i 2 

'Timber,' Jonson's notice of Shake- 
speare in, 220 n 

Tlmon of Athens : date of composi- 
tion, 242; written in collaboration, 
242; existence of a previous play 
on the subject, 242; its sources, 
243 ; the poet's coadjutor possibly 
George Wilkins, 243. For editions 
see Section xix. (Bibliography), 

301-25 

, Timon, Lucian's, 243 

i Titus Andronicus : one of the only 
two plays of the poet's performed 
by a company other than his own, 
36 ; doubts of its authenticity, 65 ; 
internal evidence of Kyd's author- 
ship, 65 : suggested by Titus and 
Vespasian, 65 ; played by various 
companies, 66 ; entered on the 
' Stationers' Register ' in 1594, 66. 
For editions see Section xix. (Bib- 
liography), 301 25 
Titus and Vespasian, Titus Andro?ii- 
cus suggested by, 65 

: Tofte, Robert, sonnets by, 438 and 
n 2 
Topics of the day, Shakespeare's 

treatment of, 51 n, 52 
Tottel's poetical miscellany, Surrey's 
and Wyatt's sonnets in, 427, 428 

; Tours of English actors : in foreign 
countries between 1580 and 1630, 
42, and see n 1 ; in provincial 
towns, 39, 40-42, 65, 214 ; itinerary 
from 1593 to 16 14, 40 n 1, 231 
Translations of the poet's works, 
342 seq. 

j Travel, foreign, Shakespeare's ridi- 
cule of, 42 and ;/. 
' Troilus and Cresseid," 227 
Troilus and Cressida : allusion to 
the strife between adult and boy 
actors, 217; date of production, 
217, 225 ; probably suggested by a 

, previous play on the subject, 225 ; 



474 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



TROY 

the quarto and folio editions, 226, 
227; treatment of the theme, 227, 
228 ; the endeavour to treat the 
play as the poet's contribution to 
controversy between Jonson and 
Marston and Dekker, 228 n ; plot 
drawn from Chaucer's ' Troilus 
and Cresseid,' and Lydgate's 
' Trov Book,' 227. For editions 
see Section xix. (Bibliography), 
301-25 

' Troy Book,' Lydgate's, 227 

True Tragedie of Richard III, The, 
an anonymous play, 63, 301 

Trtie Tragedie of Richard, Duke of 
Yorke, and the death of good King 
Henry the Sixt, as it was sundrie 
times acted by the Earl of Pem- 
broke his servants, The, 59 

Turbervile, George, use of the word 
' sonnet ' by, 427 n 2 

Twelfth Night : description of a be- 
trothal, 2372; indebtedness to the 
story of ' Apollonius and Silla,' 53 ; 
date of production, 209; allusion 
to the ' new map,' 209, 210 n 1 ; 
produced at Middle Temple Hall, 
210; Manningham's description 
of, 210; probable source of the 
story, 210; its romantic pathos, 
210. For editions see Section xix. 
(Bibliography), 301-25 

Twiss, F., 364 n 

Two Gentlemen of Verona: allusion 
to Valentine travelling from Verona 
to Milan by sea, 43 ; date of pro- 
duction, 52; probably an adapta- 
tion, 53 ; source of the story, 53; 
farcical drollery, 53; first publica- 
tion, 53; influence of Lyly, 62; 
satirical allusion to sonnetteering, 
107, 108 ; resemblance of it to 
All's Well that Ends Well, 163. 
For editions see Section xix. 
(Bibliography), 301-25 

Two Noble Kinsmen, The : attributed 
to Fletcher and Shakespeare, 259 
and n ; reasons for assigning part- 
authorship to Shakespeare, 260; 
Massinger reputed to have shared 
in its .production, 260: Shake- 
spearean passages, 260; plot 
drawn from Chaucer's ' Knight's 
Tale ' of Palamon and Arcite, 260 



WALKER 

Twyne, Lawrence, the story of Peri- 
cles in the ■ Patterne of Painfull 
Adventures ' by, 244 

Tyler, Mr. Thomas, on the sonnets, 
129 n, 406 n, 415 n 

Ulrici, ' Shakespeare's Dramatic 
Art ' by, 345 

Variorum editions of Shakespeare, 

3 22 - 3 2 3. 3 62 

Vautrollier, Thomas, the London 
printer, 32 

Venesyon Comedy, The, produced by 
Henslowe at the Rose, 69 

' Venus and Adonis ' : published in 
1593 by Richard Field, 74; dedi- 
cated to the Earl of Southampton, 
74, 126; its imagery and general 
tone, 75 ; the influence of Ovid, 75 ; 
and of Lodge's ' Scillas Metamor- 
phosis,' 75 and n 2; the motto, 75 
and 11 1 ; eulogies bestowed upon 
it. 78, 79; early editions, 79, 299, 
300 

Verdi, operas by, 352 

Vere, Lady Elizabeth, 378 

Vernon, Mistress Elizabeth, 379 

Versification, Shakespeare's, 49 and 
n, 50 

Vigny, Alfred de, version of Othello 
by, 351 

Villemain, recognition of the poet's 
greatness by, 350 

Virginia Company, 381 

Visor, William, in Henry IV, the 
name of a family at Woodman- 
cote, 168 

Voltaire, strictures on the poet by, 

348, 349 
Voss, J. H., German translation of 
Shakespeare by, 344 



Walden, Lord, Campion's sonnet 

to, 140 
Wales, Henry, Prince of, the Earl of 

Nottingham's company of players 

taken into the patronage of, 231 n 
Walker, William, the poet's godson, 

276 
Walker, W. Sidney, his work on 

Shakespeare's versification, 49 n 



INDEX 



475 



Walley, Henry, printer, 226 

Warburton, Bishop, revised version 
of Pope's edition of Shakespeare 
bv, 318, 319 

Ward, Dr. A. W„ 365 

Ward, Rev. John, on the poet's an- 
nual expenditure, 203 ; on the 
poet's entertainment of Drayton 
and Jonson at New Place, and on 
the poet's death, 271 ; his account 
of the poet, 361 

Warner, Richard, 364 

Warner, William, the probable trans- 
lator of the Mencechmi, 54 

Warren, John, 300 

Warwickshire : prevalence of the 
surname Shakespeare, 1, 2; posi- 
tion of the Arden family, 6 ; Queen 
Elizabeth's progress on the way to 
Kenilworth, 17 

Watchmen in the poet's plays, 31, 62 

Watkins, Richard, printer, 393 

Watson, Thomas, 61 ; the passage 
on Time in his ' Passionate Cen- 
turie of Love ' elaborated in 
' Venus and Adonis,' 77 and n 2 ; 
his sonnets, 83, 427 n 2, 428 ; 
plagiarisation of Petrarch, 101 n 4, 
102 ; foreign origin of his sonnets, 
103721,112; his 'Teares of Fancie,' 
113 n 1, 398, 433 

' Weak endings ' in Shakespeare, 

49 * 
Webbe, Alexander, makes John 

Shakespeare overseer of his will, 

11 
Webbe, Robert, buys the Snitter- 

field property from Shakespeare's 

mother, 12 and « 1 
Webster, John, alludes in the White 

Divel to Shakespeare's industry, 

278 n 
Weelkes, Thomas, 182 n 
Weever, application of the epithets 

' sugred ' and ' sweet ' to the poet 

by, 179 11 ; allusion in his ' Mirror 

of Martyrs ' to Antony's speech at 

Caesar's funeral, 211 
Welcombe, enclosure of common 

fields at, 269, 270 and n 
' Westward for Smelts ' and the 

Merry Wives of Windsor, 172 and 

n 3 ; story of Ginevra in, 249 
Whateley, Anne, the assumed iden- 



tification of her with Anne Hatha- 
way, 23, 24 and n 

Wheler, R. B., 363 

Whetstone, George, his play of 
Promos and Cassandra taken from 
Cinthio's Epitia, 237 

White, Mr. Richard Grant, 325 

Whitehall, performances at, 81, 82, 
234, 235 and n, 241, 254 n, 264 

Wieland, Christopher Martin, begins 
a prose translation in German of 
Shakespeare, 343 

Wilkins, George, his collaboration 
with Shakespeare in Timon of 
Athens and Pericles, 242, 243 ; his 
novel founded on the story of 
Pericles, 244 

Wilks, Robert, actor, 335 

Will, Shakespeare's, 203, 271, 273- 
6 

'Will' sonnets, the, 117; Eliza- 
bethan meanings of 'will,' 416; 
Shakespeare's uses of the word, 
417 ; Roger Ascham's use of the 
word, 417, 418 ; the poet's puns on 
the word, 418 ; play upon ' wish ' 
and 'will,' 419; interpretation of 
the word in Sonnets cxxiv.-vi. and 
cxliii., 420-6 

' Willobie his Avisa,' the question of 
its relation to Shakespeare, 155- 
8 

Wilmcote, house of Shakespeare's 
mother, 6, 7 ; bequest to Mary 
Arden of the Asbies property at, 7 ; 
mortgage of the Asbies property 
at, 12, 26; alleged identity of this 
place with the ' Wincot ' in The 
Taming of The Shrew, 166, 167 

Wilnecote. See under Wincot 

Wilson, Robert, author of The Three 
Ladies of London, 67 

Wilson, Thomas, his manuscript 
version of Diana,' 53 

Wilton, performance of Shakespeare 
and his company at, 231, 232, 411 
and n 

' Wilton, Life of Jack,' by Nash, 
dedicated to Southampton, 385 
and n 1 

Wincot (in The Taming of The 
Shrew), its identification with the 
Wincot near Stratford, and with 
Wilnecote near Tamworth, 165, 166 



476- 



WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 



WINTERS 

Winter's Tale, A : seen by Dr. For- 
man at the Globe in 1611, 251 ; 
acted at Court, 251 and n; based 
on Greene's Pandosto, afterwards 
called Dorastus and Favonia, 251 ; 
a few lines taken from the ' De- 
cameron,' 251 and n ; originality 
of the characters of Paulina and 
Autolycus, 251; pathos of the 
story, 251 ; the presentation of 
country life, 251. For editions see 
Section xix. (Bibliography) , 301-25 

' Wire,' use of the word, for women's 
hair, 118 and n 2 

Wise, J. R., 363 

Wither, George, 388, 399 n 2 

' Witte's Pilgrimage,' Davies's, 441 « 2 

Women, excluded from Elizabethan 
stage, 38 and n 2.; on French and 
Italian stages, 38 n 2 ; in masks 
at Court, 38 n 2 ; on the Restora- 
tion stage, 334 

Women, addresses to, in sonnets, 92, 
117-20, 122 n, 123, 124, 154 

Woncot in Henry IV identical with 
Woodmancote, 168 

Wood, Anthony a, his description of 
the Earl of Pembroke, 414 

Woodmancote. See Woncot 

Worcester, Earl of, his company of 
actors at Stratford, 10, 35 ; under 
the patronage of Queen Anne of 
Denmark, 231 n 

Worcester, registry of the diocese of, 
3. 20 



ZEPHERIA 

Wordsworth, Bishop Charles, on 
Shakespeare and the Bible, 17 n 1 

Wordsworth, William, the poet, on 
German and French aesthetic 
criticism, 344, 349 

Wotton, Sir Henry, on the burning 
of the Globe Theatre, 261 and n 

Wright, Dr. Aldis, 314 n, 325 

Wright, John, one of the booksellers 
who distributed the pirated Son- 
nets, 90 

Wriothesley, Lord, 381 

Wroxhall, the Shakespeares of, 3 

Wyatt, Sir Thomas, sonnetteering 
of, 83,95, 101 n 4, 427; his trans- 
lations of two of Petrarch's son- 
nets, 104 n 4 

Wyman, W. H., 372 

Wyndham, Mr. George, on the 
sonnets, no ;/. ; on Aniony and 
Cleopatra, 245 n ; on Jacobean 
typography, 419 n 1 



Yonge, Bartholomew, translation of 

'Diana' by, 53 
Yorkshire Tragedy, The, 180, 243, 

313 



Zepheria, a collection of sonnets 
called, 435; legal terminology in, 
32 n 2, 435; lips compared with 
coral in, 118 n 2; the praise of 
Daniel's ' Delia' in, 431, 435, 436 



A NEW AND COMPLETE 

CONCORDANCE 

OR 

Verbal Index to Words, Phrases, and Passages in the 

Dramatic Works of William Shakespeare, with 

a Supplementary Concordance to the Poems 

BY 

JOHN BARTLETT, A.n. 

Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 
Author of '■'Familiar Quotations" etc. 

i volume. Medium Quarto. 1900 pp. $7,50 net. 



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